DWELLING CRAFT

No Maker, Only Making

2012-03-13T21:56:41Z

My father, a potter, ceramics artist, and teacher, recently raised the issue of whether it is possible to have art without an artist. Though his question was motivated by a conversation he'd had with another artist about what we might call social action art—in which an “artist” acts essentially as a facilitator for a group of people to devise an activity that in some way reflects or attempts to fulfill their aspirations and concerns. The activity may be typically familiar as art, such as painting a mural, but it may equally be something that serves a direct social need, such as distributing blankets to homeless people. (The corollary question, of course, is what defines an activity as art.)

My response was basically to displace the question of a doer—the idea I was getting at was not specific to art, but more fundamentally about definitions of self and intentional action. One of the essential teachings of Buddhism is anatta: “no self”—which my teacher Ajahn Buddhadasa would describe obliquely with phrases such as “no walker, only walking; no maker, only making.” That is, there is activity, but no “person” initiating the action: all perceptions of self are based on (inter)dependent conditions that ultimately rest on other conditions, with no starting or ending point.¹ One of the keys to practice according to this set of insights is developing attention (through meditation and other means) that at some point spontaneously gives rise to this recognition of anatta. It's not really saying “existence is an illusion” so much as concluding (based on direct observation) that the fact of impermanence negates the possibility of a continuing self. Within this framework, it's demonstrably true; beyond the framework, it's not fully convincing (also based on direct observation).

The application to artistic creation (also authorship) that I was bringing up relates to the common experience of ego dissolution in the creative moment—the sense that the sculpture simply needed to be freed from the stone, or that the story writes itself to the degree that the “creator” can successfully get out of the way. This is especially true of improvisational music. It always depends (at least when artistically successful) on a sufficient degree of technical proficiency as well as on adherence to, or at least response to (or intentional reaction against), some sort of structure—without any structure, it's simply noise, not art.

Nature can be defined as spontaneously arising, interdependent patterns and forms that occur without an identifiable creator; it is highly structured, and the epitome of technical proficiency. It's also the definition of dhamma—“nature” and “practice according to nature”—so the successful art that I'm describing, in which the creator becomes a conduit for the arising of forms, is simply nature performing through the artist. Traditional art in Buddhist cultures approaches this is various ways—the thankgas and mandalas of Tibet emphasize following precisely defined grids, while Zen art (especially zenga calligraphy/brush painting) epitomizes spontaneity arising from developed awareness.² Both approaches are expressions of nature, though the former works as a tool for developing awareness (that is, it is a meditative process) while the latter is the result (a product).

There is an important distinction between the active attention that defines meditative awareness and the possibility of egolessness in artistic creation—they can certainly coincide (and I would argue that the most successful art occurs when this happens) but the latter can also easily be a trance state, which is actually the antithesis of meditative awareness. The sort of absorption into a greater (transcendent) awareness that is the goal or basis of devotional religious practices (Hindu bhakti for example), and also of spirit-possession rituals (such as Vodun), may be more similar to these trance states than to the active awareness of Buddhist meditation. Even so, these states may also be conducive to creation that occurs with no creator.

¹ In Kabbalah this is called ein sof—literally “nothingness” but functionally “infinite.”

² Also notable is the Fuke Zen practice of suizen, “blowing meditation” (shakuhachi flute), which combines intensive technical demands with the objective of “becoming the wind.”

Mastery and Non-Mastery

2010-03-16T02:57:56Z

A suggestive notion that comes up from time to time in Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa’s writing and talks, which may seem contradictory, or at least unfamiliar, is “non-mastery.” Mostly we’re conditioned to consider mastery desirable, particularly in craft, and in most work-related endeavors, as we’re accustomed to hearing about (and respecting) master builders, masterful musicians, martial arts masters, yoga masters, spiritual masters. The last, especially, Trungpa would consider particularly susceptible to spiritual materialism—the use of spiritualist techniques to strengthen and solidify ego, to feel better about oneself, to gain a sense of importance through spiritual attainment, to develop special powers that enable you to seduce or manipulate others—and ultimately delude yourself even beyond what a mundane, non-spiritual materialist would be capable of.

So, non-mastery: being fully at ease with things as they are; not irritably chasing after resolution of contradictions (or after “closure”); basic comfort with oneself in spite of imperfections (though not neglectful of efforts to meet challenges skillfully).

The subtlety here is that skillful response to challenges is still important, the ability to solve problems with wisdom, insight, compassion, is a crucial capacity (and here I’m elaborating on Trungpa’s direct statements, but it’s all true). But don’t get stuck on how great you are because of what you can do. Non-mastery.

Toward repairing the world: it’s up to us to maintain it, continually correcting our course—not for the sake of personal gain (although through the making of things there’s an exchange that’s sustaining[1]) but because of loving the world fiercely and wanting to make something that is a gift for its benefit, an offering, which operates by awakening delight in beings who encounter it and inhabit it.

Mastery is not finality but refinement. Acknowledgment and recognition for doing something well are helpful but too easily mistaken for an end-state or goal (useful but not sufficient).

Restraint provides a necessary resistance to being overwhelmed by the vastness of the task. Allowing the action to arise without becoming an actor may be tricky, but ultimately there's no other way to do something as a full offering. By getting out of your own way you can become receptive to something that helps move toward fuller awareness. Is this completion? So far no, only further development.

Mastery is only relevant if it develops with this attitude of moving forward, not getting stuck. Getting stuck is inevitable at certain points and getting unstuck is part of the process of developing mastery, but isn’t itself mastery. Mastery does imply a certain facility with disentangling.

The term mastery also implies a power relationship—think of slavery. Domination is essentially a non-ecological attitude.[2] But considering the origin of this term, we can see some ambiguity: the word “dome” (which, as well as referring to a hemispherical roof, is also the French and German term for cathedral), comes from Latin domus and Greek dōma, meaning house, and shares the same root as dominion, domain, dominate and domestic (and also danger and despot). So somewhere along the way, we might find a positive (or at least neutral) connotation—something like “householding.” Of course, in the cultures that produced this idea, a householder was thought of as the authority—the master of his domain—and the most developed moral codes of the day required ethical treatment of one's slaves but did not question the existence of slavery. [3]

The phrase from Genesis that’s often been cited as a philosophical basis for exploiting the earth, “You shall have dominion over all the living beings” seems to be a mistaken translation. The Hebrew prefix a (b’) attached to a word means “with”—not “over.” So that statement more reasonably reads, “You shall rule in relation with all the living beings”—a much more ecological statement.

[1] And of course it’s important to be compensated and rewarded for one’s labor.

[2] Though it’s not unrepresented in other animal species, and popular interpretations of Darwin contend that competition for resources is the law of nature—but now we recognize that within most species, and even among different species, cooperation is the norm, and that predator-prey relations tend to operate in dynamic balance, unless disrupted by, for example, human-induced habitat destruction.

[3] The Latin word for God, Dominus (typically translated as “Lord”) means something like Master of the World.

Common Sense

2010-01-29T01:48:57Z

Craft is, basically, common sense. Ingenuity is certainly a factor (anyway, it’s a close relative of common sense, fully complementary). Following a simple procedure, perhaps repeatedly, requires a basic degree of attention combined with a clear understanding of the process, perhaps with reference to the first face of tradition—an accepted process, the way it’s been done (successfully) before.[1] Many of the tasks involved in building a house occur at this level, requiring basic attention and this simplest form of common sense.

Even the simplest procedures, though, demand a bit more ingenuity: knowing when to stop adding water to the concrete mix, for example, or determining how much of that mix will be needed to fill the forms. These are also matters of common sense, with a bit of calculation and a notion, from experience, of what’s workable. Ahead of mixing the concrete, though, determining the dimensions the formwork needs to have, building and bracing the forms, installing rebar and presetting foundation bolts, all require careful calculation in addition to an understanding of the loadbearing requirements—again, based on experience and knowledge, both of yours and of others (structural engineers and building inspectors, for example), thorough familiarity with building codes and safety considerations.

These are all, in fact, further refinements of common sense.

Ecology is common sense. It is self-evident that one thing influences another, that no being exists separately from another in any definite sense, that interrelated systems are interwoven with other interrelated systems. Plants draw energy from the sun and carbon dioxide from the air to produce sugar and oxygen that animals eat and breathe. Bacteria and fungus feed on decaying plants and animals to replenish the soil. Life is intricately bound in other life. It is self-evident, to anyone paying attention, that disruptions of ecological balance are only self-correcting to a point, before leading to further disruptions. An aesthetic that values common sense will recognize the importance of reducing our disruptive impact, of implementing our craft to the best of our understanding.

[1] This aspect of tradition is the essence of education: learning from someone else’s mistakes and discoveries.

Displacement

2009-12-14T22:41:17Z

The Environmental Justice Foundation estimates that by 2050, 150 million people will have lost their homes as a direct result of climate change, from drought, flooding, desertification, rising sea levels and extreme weather events. How many millions more will become political or economic refugees because of indirect effects—social instability and unsustainable agriculture, military incursions, ethnic and tribal conflicts that arise in conditions of stress and scarcity, among other factors—is difficult to assess. (Not to mention any of the other mundane, ongoing causes of forced migration.[1]) How will the rest of the planet absorb these people?

Since the beginning of industrial development, rural villagers have crowded into cities—sometimes voluntarily, but often as a result of combined environmental, economic and political pressures (in some cases abetted by dubious advertising, sleazy promoters suggesting wonderful opportunities). Not that rural poverty is the best possible life, but concentrating 70 percent of the world’s population in increasingly uninhabitable cities is clearly not the best alternative.

At Tule Lake

“The Modocs’ grief was for a whole relationship to the natural world and to a specific place, for their culture and community, while the grief of those who produced and profited from their loss was purely personal.”[2] In this statement, Rebecca Solnit describes both parties to an indigenous displacement in terms of grief—the military conquerors who forced the Modocs from their ancestral homeland (in 1873) suffered both private losses and their own ancient inheritance of exile, a separation from place and connection to land that in some ways enabled—or at least coincided with—European technological advances and colonizing impulses. The trauma of their early, mostly forgotten, displacements survived as the willing suspension of empathy that fueled the engine of conquest.

The Modocs were driven from the land of their birth, the center of the world where they had always lived, the place that had nourished and supported them from the beginnings of time. The place was the heart of their culture and the basis of meaning in their universe. To be pushed even a few miles away was irreconcilable. A complete rupture. Recovering that land someday could, perhaps, repair some of the damage, but so much specific knowledge is lost when this sort of intimacy with a place is destroyed that it seems unlikely ever to be fully restored.

The deepest loss is of that intimacy, which is the core of indigenous experience in a place, of a place. Even if old stories are remembered, even if the language survives (or is revived), without the deep everyday experience of the specific subject of the stories, there’s a degree of understanding that is simply unavailable. Who knows how many dozens or hundreds of generations it takes to develop?

And yet, change is inevitable, and developing strategies of engagement, of honestly learning to meet a place, seems preferable to simply lamenting its demise.

[1] “The number of people forcibly uprooted by conflict and persecution worldwide stood at 42 million at the end of last year amid a sharp slowdown in repatriation and more prolonged conflicts resulting in protracted displacement. The total includes 16 million refugees and asylum seekers and 26 million internally displaced people uprooted within their own countries.” UNHCR press release, 6/16/09.

[2] Rebecca Solnit, River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, pp. 116-117.

Unintended Consequences

2009-11-10T17:32:37Z

When the so-called swine flu threatened Egypt (land of the Pharaohs), the government decreed that all pigs would be destroyed. Of course there was no epidemiological basis for this. It was really just a convenient ploy for further marginalizing an already degraded group of tribal Coptic Christians living in the mountains above Cairo.

It turns out these pig-herders, known as zabaleen (“garbage collectors”), are the recyclers of Cairo—perhaps the noisiest city on earth, now also one of the most putrid. Many of the zabaleen are descendents of poor farmers, displaced from their land for a combination of environmental and political factors, who came to Cairo in the 1950s. They turned to garbage collection because Muslims consider it unclean. By hand-sorting, the zabaleen have successfully recycled up to 85 percent of the garbage they collect.[1] Until recently, the organic waste was fed to their pigs.

But without their pigs to feed, the zabaleen don’t have much incentive to remove food waste from the ubiquitous street-corner piles of it. Without a functioning alternative strategy, the food waste rots in the streets.[2] There seems to be a lot of it.

Everybody loses: the pigs are dead, the zabaleen deprived of a crucial part of their livelihood, the streets of Cairo stink. Of course there’s no impact on the spread of H1N1 or any other infectious disease, except perhaps to worsen conditions that increase their impact and spread them further—so perhaps there is a winner after all, if you consider the pathogens. With respect to the delicate and severely stressed ecology of a human settlement such as Cairo, it seems all of this demands a more rational sort of attention.

[1] “From Cairo's trash, a model of recycling,” Jack Epstein, SF Chronicle, 6/3/06.

[2] “Garbage piles up in Cairo after swine-flu pig slaughter,” Michael Slackman, NY Times, 9/19/09.

Ecological Inklings

2009-10-28T20:28:02Z

Nature is orderly. That which appears to be chaotic in nature is only a more complex kind of order.[1]

Ecology begins as an inkling—an acknowledgment—of the sacredness of life. It is an assertion of value: that life does not begin or end with humans, or even with plants and animals—but is a force, a flow, a pattern (a system of patterns, the source of patterns, the origin of order) that animates the whole of the universe.

It is important and useful to return, repeatedly, to the simple recognition inherent in this statement—the source is recognizable through feeling, impression. It may not be audible over the hectic clamor that propels and entertains us. It may (often) be a whisper, a fleeting glimpse of some original face peeking through the branches.

It may be a subjective impression. It may be deniable. But it is not deniable.

The opposite of aesthetic is anesthetic. If we can’t appreciate beauty, we won’t be bothered to care at which point anything (everything) is left to degrade.

“The connection between order and feeling is fundamental. In some fashion, profound order makes us feel our own existence,” says Christopher Alexander.[2] The reverse makes it clearer still: disorder and disorganization displace us from the possibility of attentive awareness. If we lack attention, we are nowhere. The self, the personal, only coalesces in awareness that is sustained from moment to moment.

Consider this: if you are unable to comprehend the order of the alphabet, there is no possibility of deriving meaning from the symbols.

Even more so when the symbols are patterns of nature—dynamic patterns, a system in process. We clearly become more alive as we are more able to witness the order inherent in nature.[3]

[1] Gary Snyder, in “Good, Wild, Sacred,” The Practice of the Wild, p. 93.

[2] The Nature of Order, Vol.1, p. 312.

[3] It is true that breathing can occur without attention. But breathing with attention intensifies the degree of participation in one’s own life.

The Sacred Mountain and the Temple

2009-09-16T16:18:42Z

We’re neurologically, physiologically predisposed to engage our senses, experience a fullness, in natural settings—overwhelmed by the vastness of the ocean but also startled, cleansed, awakened by so many minute details—a nook in the woods, a perch by the river, the enclosure of a cave, the prominence of a mountain peak. Getting there is part of making room for the shift in awareness, part of the preparation—the exertion, the effort, quickening the pulse, breaking a sweat in the climb—clearing away heaviness, stagnation, the goop that otherwise mires us in confusion or resentment. Immersion in a stream or the ocean is often part of this clearing process. Simply exercising may accomplish some of this physiologically, but jogging on a treadmill (especially with headphones piping in the morning stock market report) isn’t really reaching it.

Human-made religious structures, the most basic, intuitive varieties at least, begin with making altars and offerings. These gestures of relatedness and gratitude (or possibly of appeasement—feeding a hungry beast so it doesn’t make your life yet more difficult) can be a way of thanking the place for being welcoming—a gracious host—and attempting to give something back. This in turn becomes a mandate in many cultures to become gracious hosts to our own guests, this being the most direct means of returning the favor that is simply the fact of our existence—the original act of generosity.

Witness Trauma

2009-09-11T21:48:34Z

Original Forest

I lived for the first half of 1989 in a tiny cabin in the heavily wooded mountains of Southern Oregon, a mile or so by well-rutted dirt road and footpath above a ghost town called Golden and a cold stream known as Coyote Creek. The nearest town with a post office was another three or four miles away (and I didn’t know anyone there or particularly want to, so I didn’t hang around much[1]).

I needed a place to go where I could be still for a while. I’d lost two friends the previous year and was at a bit of a loss for what to do, where to go. After finishing college I’d taken a ride from Portland to Alaska to work in the fisheries of Valdez, Prince William Sound (which were more or less intact when I was there, until an incompetent swindler let 12 million barrels of oil drain out of the tanker he nominally controlled that following spring, as I stewed in my canyon), and come back without any plan to speak of.

Ecstatic moments and grim moments swirled into a tangled knot, though not necessarily a tight knot. In fact there was a good deal of looseness in the uncertain antics of those days.

For lack of a better plan, and because I was distrustful of plans at that point, I let myself follow the pull toward the anti-industrial protests of the so-called timber wars of the Northwest. We came from everywhere, true, but this is where we belonged: in the woods, willing to sacrifice comfort and safety to hinder the twisted intentions of junk-bond liquidators and petty tyrants as best we could, by legal means or otherwise.[2] One friend I met at a small gathering, and then at the road blockade that followed, invited me to stay at his place above Coyote Creek. By the middle of January I was ready for a place where I could unravel.

-----

The dirt road snuck in through shady mixed conifer and second-growth Douglas fir trees (this south slope had been logged in the 1950s), and crossed a small wooden bridge at a level spot along a year-round stream fed by clear springs higher up. From here a narrow path wound its way up the small bowl-shaped canyon. My cabin was about halfway up the slope, a half-hour walk from the bottom, in a small clearing with a plywood platform to one side and the steep drop into the canyon at the back. The view from cabin and deck was immense, multidimensional, deeper than most anything else I’ve encountered. The entire west and north slopes of the canyon were alive with a quiet stand of the original forest, the ancient trees that once blanketed the entire region, of which only scattered islands remain.

There was snow on the ground when I arrived. I had never set foot in this place before but it all felt familiar and right. I had no trouble finding my way up the winding path. When I stepped between two trees near the top, I sensed that I had passed through some sort of barrier, into a set-aside zone, a sanctuary, where everything was somehow more present than in the outside world. In one sense I’d come here to hide, but from the first moments it was clear that in this place, in my grieving and uncertainty, I would also be greeting someone or something with a fullness I might have barely glimpsed before. Certainly not with the intensity I would soon encounter.

-----

No electricity, no phone. No running water to my cabin, though a two-minute walk brought me to an old bath house, where a spigot piped water down from the steady spring.

Removing myself so completely from the world of social interaction and technology[3] gave me an opportunity to tune in to the rhythms and beings of the place, to sharpen my senses. To live deliberately (as an old surveyor from the Northeast once said), though not really free of the ebb and flow of intense yearning—which would, however, subside more or less of its own accord, tiresome to the point of irrelevance, after a few hours or days. I learned to meditate, forced by necessity (though I would have benefited from the sort of training I later entered in Thailand), learned to discern the varieties of breezes and degrees of agitation or calmness they inspired.

I stayed at Golden for six months, broken up by some trips to visit friends but mostly alone in my canyon. During those months I would walk or catch a ride into town (really little more than a stagecoach stop) a few miles away for supplies every few days, sometimes not for a week or two or three. I spent my hours walking, reading, carving faces in small scraps of wood, just watching the trees or the hawks, making a fire, foraging for edible plants, cooking rice, dismantling fences, writing, gardening. I left after the place was destroyed by logging, after I determined I had learned as much as I was able to from solitude and desolation.

-----

The presence of that forest was indescribable.

I would go for days, sometimes weeks at a time with no human contact. The dimensions of loneliness were unfathomable. Yet somehow, within a couple of weeks after returning from any excursions into more inhabited zones, I would awaken to a presence in the place. A Presence. Really. A pervasive experience of communion with a vast ancient being contained in that physical canyon, a moody jealous majestic empress,[4] a non-human non-animal life whose intense demand for attention sharpened all senses. Comfort and discomfort intermingled. No spite, no judgment, but deep sorrow and yearning as well as ticklish whispers and giggles.

Yes, the human mind concocts fantastic visions when stressed by extreme solitude. Yes, she was real. Yes, she was there. And then mercenaries of absent industrialists killed her.

-----

It’s not as if the place had been untouched by humans, even by possibly inconsiderate, self-serving humans in the past. For a few thousand years, at least, the area had been within the wider hunting and fishing grounds of peoples who were displaced and largely destroyed between 1803 and the 1950s, including through an official, recent policy of “termination” which stripped tribal status from most groups in the region, essentially to impoverish and demoralize the people whose ancestors had been there, and who were the legitimate inhabitants of the place.[5]

Coyote Creek had been mined by Euro-Americans since the 1850s, and the town of Golden was incorporated in 1890. At some point this spot on the creek had a population of two hundred or so, and was known for having two churches (one of which still stands) and no saloons.[6] Gold mining continued to be the mainstay of the small settlements here well into the 20th century.[7] By the 1950s logging had surpassed gold mining economically. But it was not until the late 1980s (and particularly the first week of May, 1989) that some of the steeper slopes of the original forest were cut.

-----

I’m not opposed to cutting trees. As a carpenter and woodworker, I acknowledge my complicity in the practice, and that using wood can be reasonable and justifiable, often preferable to other alternatives. But cutting trees is vastly different from destroying forests, or damaging otherwise living places. Most of the pressure toward mining timber lands (as opposed to thinning or selective cutting, which need not be so destructive) is of course economic, and intertwined with national and international market dynamics. It has much more to do with the insane overdevelopment of speculative housing sprawl that paved over so much farmland and otherwise disrupted formerly living places in the past 40 or 50 years—now revealed as the land pollution that it is—than with any interest in preserving local jobs (or really anything else local), as the conflict was unfortunately framed during much of that era.

On a smaller scale, it is truly possible to work more deliberately and considerately, in a way that is less destructive of places and resources, with attention to the origins of the materials and to better ways of using them. This is interrelated with designing particular structures that integrate the needs of the users and the place, that have a feeling of aliveness, that provide a sense of refuge—that can truly become homes—the crafting of dwellings.

-----

In the two decades since I left that place, I've meandered and bounced down a few different roads. But I always come back to that moment, that sense of presence and sanctuary, even though the literal place was destroyed. Perhaps it's more accurate to say I left part of myself there, and at the same time some piece of it got stuck in me.

[1] There was a pay phone in front of the general store that I’d make use of every week or two or three, mostly to reassure my parents I was doing fine—which I suppose I was, overall, though it’s much more convoluted than that.

[2] My profound affection for the people I knew in those moments has not diminished, though most of them have since drifted or faded from my known world.

[3] Though I did have a battery-powered radio I turned on occasionally, which informed me, among other things, of the oil spill in Prince William Sound and of the demonstrations and massacre in Tiananmen Square.

[4] And I do recognize that using feminine pronouns here has intimations of an old and not necessarily accurate convention. I’m not contending that nature is somehow more female, and culture somehow more male. I’m only referring to this particular presence in this particular place, based on getting to know a living being directly, and sensing the character of that being as feminine. Other people who have known the place concur with this perception. I realize there’s no objective standard for evaluating the truth of the assertion, or of my direct experience whatsoever. I can only say that many people through the ages, of practically every background, have had similar experiences, and that certain features of these experiences will be recognizable as familiar, to the point where consistencies could be charted. What makes it possible to experience such phenomena is not a matter of abandoning a scientific skepticism—in fact that remains a useful navigational tool—but simply clearing away the chatter of a restless mind.

[5] Though some groups have revived in recent decades (notably the Klamath and Modoc, themselves confederations of smaller bands), for the most part the end of the world is something that already happened for the indigenous peoples of the region. Of the Takelma, Latagwa and Calapooya who likely traversed this creek and canyons—there were once salmon up here, within the memory of living residents—and tracked deer through the hills, the Latagwa at least are resisting reports of their own demise.

[6] “Perhaps unique among Western annals” according to the Josephine County Historical Society, though it seems fair to suspect other settlements in the West may have been similarly influenced by Temperance Societies and their ilk. The extant church building was originally established by a group of Campbellites, who were apparently among the millennialist sects of the 1870s (largely in the northeastern U.S.), who believed either that Jesus would arrive momentarily or that he in fact had already arrived—though he only appeared to a select few.

[7] “Placer activity on Coyote Creek began in the 1850s. Abandoning these claims during the Idaho Gold Rush of 1860, the men returned to find them being worked by about five hundred Chinese for ten cents per day plus rice. The Chinese contractor yielded possession.”

No "there" there?

2009-09-09T16:09:09Z

When Gertrude Stein wrote about Oakland that "there is no there there," she was, as far as she presumed, talking specifically about the house she had grown up in, which was, in fact, no longer there when she returned to visit after many years in Europe. So for once at least she felt the peculiar unease of exile, of the disappearance of her childhood home.

Of course many presumably sensible, reasonable people have imagined she was referring to Oakland in general. And even if they're aware of the detail, they may consider this the correct interpretation, in spite of her intention.

There's a certain vagueness that's discernible in Oakland, a disorientation, a sense of placelessness. A palpable malaise that isn't simply an artifact of economic hardship or race politics, though of course those are both factors. (Here the proud defenders of Oaktown will commence to harangue me, so before you slam me against a concrete wall, let me just say I'm not trying to insult the place, I'm actually yearning for the possibility of healing it. Of course there are many reasons to love Oakland--all sorts of funky, even some swanky, neighborhoods with various laid-back attitudes or shiny urban intentions, great Cambodian food, a fabulous record store that never gave up on vinyl, the grandest Art Deco theater remaining anywhere, one of the premier jazz venues in the country, all sorts of homegrown art, music, atmosphere, culture, what have you.)

I'm actually getting at something deeper than the everyday traffic and slander, something underneath all the politics and struggle. Because whoever feels like there's something missing has a point. There is something missing. It starts with a pair of trees.

In the early days of the place, the tallest redwoods ever known stood on the ridge of Oakland's hills among a grove that spanned a swath from East Oakland to Moraga Valley. There were two particularly grand redwoods that towered into the sky so prominently that mariners making their way into the Golden Gate would get their bearings, twenty miles out at sea, by aligning their sights with the two trees to follow a clear path through the treacherous rocks and shoals. So the pair of trees were a beacon, a landmark in the most literal sense, guiding pilgrims and opportunists eastward into the safe haven.

We don't know what those particular trees meant to the tens of thousands of inhabitants who lived along these shores for thousands of years, but it's safe to say that removing them--they were logged by 1860--was one detail in the ongoing devastation of this land, which has left it contaminated, buried beneath layers of concrete and indifference, to the point where good intentions will not be sufficient to correct the damage. And that damage is psychic and spiritual fully as much as it is physical. We need a focal point to return to, to orient us, remind us of the non-human dimension. Disorientation is a disease, a displacement, a version of exile. We are unsettled, homeless.

True sustainability is affordable

2009-09-03T06:37:09Z

An article in the NY Times about builder Dan Phillips ("One Man's Trash ...") cuts to one of the core issues of green architecture and sustainability: if we can't afford it, it won't be sustainable. Isn't this obvious? So in the midst of all sorts of companies producing and marketing innovative products that might even be useful, here's someone using salvaged materials for practically every aspect of the houses he builds. Beyond that, he will only work for people who work on the houses themselves--the sort of investment that keeps people connected to their places, and perhaps provides an experience of the place with an inkling of the sacred. (Here's a direct link to his website The Phoenix Commotion.)

Reuse of building materials has a venerable history. For many centuries, Sardinian builders have appropriated stones from the Neolithic nuraghe structures that dot the countryside. The boomtowns of San Francisco, Sacramento, Benecia and assorted other Gold Rush settlements began with dismantled ships that more often than not had simply been abandoned on arrival. In many parts of the world, the process is simply a given: you use what's accessible. Beyond convenience, it's a matter of necessity. But even where it's not an economic or logistical necessity, at a certain point, it's also a matter of integrity, to use what's at hand instead of generating so much waste.

Let's not forget Gandhi and Laurie Baker. Among Gandhi's dictums was the suggestion to only use materials found within a five-mile radius. (Compare that with the LEED criteria for "local sources"--their certification process recognizes a 500-mile radius as close enough. Of course, we're talking about vastly different infrastructures between India of the mid-1900s and, say, California in the early 2000s. But still, is Winnemucca, Nevada, reasonably local to San Francisco?) The British-born architect Laurie Baker accepted an invitation from Gandhi in the mid-1940s and spent the rest of his life in India designing and building structures that emphasized simplicity, beauty, affordability, appropriateness to local conditions and use of salvaged and local (in Gandhi's sense) materials. He left a legacy of devotion to Right Livelihood that deserves serious consideration.

Take Your Time

2009-09-02T05:47:58Z

The whole neurotic business of striving toward one accomplishment after another with no pause for a cigarette (at least since tobacco lost its status as a valid pastime--makes me wonder if there's still an Israeli brand called TIME, as there was in 1987) or to dip several toes in the cool, shady creek or, for that matter, to give up on something more or less proven to be useless and not actually even very delicious--how is it possible to get anywhere important when it's hardly possible to get a simple thing done well?

The point is that endless production of useless artifacts (not actually deserving even that description, for the most part) gets in the way of taking it easy (Walt Whitman called this "loafing"), which is not the same as laziness--ease suggests a light touch: this is important. Ease is a necessary condition for generous reverence (and reverent generosity), a receptive atmosphere in which it's possible to hear the crickets and not choke on the coffee. Very important. Taking is more problematic: at least a few ancient attitudes about it are distinctly negative--grasping after wind, greedily pulling too many fish into your bucket, that sort of thing. But still, taking ease really is entirely different than clawing your way through someone else's wad of cash (keep your hands off of my stash ...).

How long does it take to make something? How long does it take to make something better, even modestly better than average? I'll let you know as soon as I finish this instrument I'm working on. It's the harp/santur that gets mounted on/in the south wall of the earthen cottage I've built here, and it's not done yet. In all honestly, it will probably be done in a couple of weeks, more or less. (Not what you were expecting to hear? thought maybe months, or years?) Not a major burden. Previous instruments have taken me anywhere from two or three weeks to two or three years. My favorite luthier, Fred Carlson, builds about one instrument a year, more or less, as his full-time profession. In his case, the question would be more reasonably, "How long does it take to make something outrageously beautiful?" (A couple of years ago I interviewed Fred about his creative/constructive process--I hope to publish some version of that one of these days, with his permission.)

Americans are famously materialistic about time. That comes from the Puritans, probably, or perhaps from the Germans (who have more descendants in this country than any other group). But that first modern American (though he leaned toward France late in life) old Ben (or Poor Richard or whoever) got it wrong, if he was being serious: time is in fact not money (except perhaps in Berkeley, where the local currency known as BREAD takes an Hour as the basic unit of exchange ... if it's still in existence). Okay, perhaps it is, more or less. But not really. What I mean is, the less time has to be related to money, the more valuable it becomes. Our time is precious especially when it is not being bought and sold. As soon as it's commodified, it flattens--has fewer dimensions, becomes dry and linear, doesn't show you much that's inspiring to your life, to your deepest being.

We try to package our moments, stuff too much into prefabricated cartons, received notions of the right way to do things so often resting on no real authority but convention. Stiff habitual patterns. But the devious winds of the open road scatter all those annoying styrofoam shells every which way, no regard for the best intentions. So take your time and play with it. Have a playful attitude. The only reasonable perspective.

A Pair of Goats

2009-05-14T05:06:32Z

Azazel

The so-called scapegoat was originally never actually blamed for causing any problem. In fact the source ritual brings forward a pair of equally unblemished goats and selects, at random (by lottery), one of them to be sacrificed on the temple altar. The other goat is the "scape" goat, given a transmission by the high priest, who lays his hands on the goat's head in a sort of magical act of transferring the sins of the nation, to carry the pollution away ... to Azazel, the desert, wilderness, wasteland.

The goat is simply a messenger--again, he's never considered responsible for committing the transgressions of the nation (or of anyone, really--he's just a goat, after all, capable of capricious mischief but nothing comparable to what humans can do). He carries his burden away from the community, out to the harsh, uninhabitable zone, where he's set loose to wander and survive as well as he can (or, according to some accounts, pushed off a cliff--but even then, goats are excellent climbers...).

The desert, for this culture, was a demonic realm--people forced out into it go crazy, wandering lost and alone, have nightmarish visions, uncertain if they are alive or dead. As such it's entirely receptive to the gift the goat conveys, especially considering that the "sins" of the people probably originated in the demonic realms in the first place. And considering that the proportion of wilderness to habitable land is heavily weighted to the wild, there's little danger of the sins returning within the first day or so (though of course demons travel quickly, not necessarily confined to the rocky path).

The removal of the collective sins (if effective at all) is temporary--just because you washed the floor, in no way is it protected from the crap you track in the following day, though you may be inspired to be a bit more careful for a brief moment. It's an annual attempt to clear a ritual space for a specific purpose, to enter a direct unification with divine reality without being dangerously distracted.

It's also worth remembering that the displacement of the collective pollution does not absolve individuals of their responsibility for wrongdoing. It's still necessary to correct one's own misdeeds in the usual tiresome ways, such as paying fines and seeking forgiveness from the person you were rude to. Whether it's successful in clearing the collective is another question entirely. It may constitute a sacrifice, but the goat gets the worst end of the deal.

Gateway

The holy of holies was considered a portal, a conduit unifying heaven and earth, a very potent spot where matter and energy are actively interchangeable. Attempting to enter the without attending to every preparatory detail would not only defile the space, but would make the the people susceptible to immolation, insanity, plague. That's the sort of danger they were worried about. Not simply whether they had been disproportionately grumpy that morning, but whether they would be competent to withstand the enormity of their lapses.

Without veering too far into superstitions about the dangers of psychic pollution, I'll just mention that, though metaphorical, there's also reasonable evidence suggesting that people are susceptible to physical (as well as emotional, social, psychological) ailments as a result of psychic toxins. And certainly, to be effective in one's endeavors, it's important to have clarity of purpose, but also to not be bogged down by too much unresolved trauma, grief guilt and other distracting, soul-clogging flotsam. So even from a purely practical standpoint, finding ways to clear up the debris--at least once a year--would seem important. A goat's life might depend on it.

Sustainability and Empathy

2009-05-08T22:08:42Z

Right livelihood

As a practice and as an attitude, sustainability can be considered a rough translation of certain quietist tendencies that have always run parallel to the noisier pursuits of most times and places. Simply stated, these perspectives give primary status to nature (while perhaps recognizing that humans are not separate from nature) and secondary status to the ambitions of kings and conquerors, considering the latter to be (full of) so much ... wind. Nature is the source of virtue and beauty, though it may be rough or rustic. Dense aggregations of humans are the source of corruption, pollution, degradation. And yet somehow the festering population centers continue to seduce with their questionable enticements, dominating the argument through sheer bluster. The rejectionist/renunciate factions may generate a sizable following in their own time or afterward, but so far have rarely been able to tip the balance.

These rejectionists see the sloppy excesses of civilization as the basis of an eventual (some say imminent) collapse--the empire overextends itself, the resources cannot meet the demand, habitats are destroyed, living beings can't adapt--and voluntarily submit to material deprivation (more or less) as a modest corrective, as an example, or simply to remove themselves from the filth. Perhaps it's an effective pressure-release for the culture as a whole. Perhaps no more than a personal escape. Either way, it originates in a perception of scarcity--there's not enough food to go around, a situation that will only get worse--but also out of empathy, which shouldn't be dismissed as a motive.

The Taoists are famous for "non-action"--which doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't do anything. More accurately, non-action recommends studying the patterns of nature and acting appropriately according to the conditions of each changing moment, as if you were nature. Buddhists will say "yes, you are nature, but don't be selfish"--in other words, dhamma (nature, law of nature, practice according to the law of nature) gives us the opportunity and obligation to train in a way that relieves the suffering of all beings.

A utopian aspiration to be sure, but nothing really foreign to any sensible child. Without empathy for the suffering of others, humans would never have developed viable groups. In fact, animals of any sort wouldn't bother protecting their offspring. Empathy is the basis of social morality: the Golden Rule, the Hippocratic Oath, the Bodhisattva Vow. If something is distasteful to you, don't impose it on someone else. First do no harm. May I attain wakefulness (consciousness, understanding) for the benefit of all sentient beings.

Ethics is a Branch of Aesthetics

When we talk about ecological sustainability, we're saying exactly this: we want a healthy world, a living planet of interconnected, alive places, populated by beings who are able to at least discover ways to not destroy ourselves, each other or our home. Crucial in this is the health and happiness of the inhabitants, who otherwise, when subjected to misery of any flavor, tend to neglect anything but the most immediate demands of survival.

When we see or hear something that bothers us, it bothers us for a couple of intertwined reasons: 1. we can relate, 2. it's ugly.

Pollution is ugly. Torture is ugly. Pain and misery are ugly. I don't mean this lightly, as if calling something ugly diminishes the tragic reality of any of these things. To put it another way: toxic sludge tastes bad. It smells bad. It makes us ill. We want it gone. Not only that, but if we hear about it oozing out in someone else's kitchen, we might experience empathic revulsion. We might want to avoid complicity in its occurrence. We might be inspired to help clean it up, even if (or perhaps particularly if) we bear no direct personal responsibility for the mess. (Psychopaths and autists lack empathy, so might not be bothered in the usual way, but if we can avoid putting such persons in positions of power we'll at least have a hope of reducing the stink.)

Make things. Make things better.

2009-05-01T06:09:58Z

When I was around 12 years old I had a dream of a fantastical horn, a sort of curly shofar-like instrument with two mouthpieces and perhaps a dozen branching, spiraling tubes extending out, up and down. I'm not sure how such an instrument would function in the waking world, but in the dream world I was able to produce immense and complex polyphonic music with it.

Since that time (and perhaps before, though I don't have a distinct recollection) I've had hundreds, perhaps thousands, of vivid dreams along these lines. In some I'm in a workshop, or the back room of an out-of-the-way junk shop. In others I'm onstage (perhaps with Miles or Dylan or Mingus--wish fulfillment, you might say), or at a house party or outdoors somewhere, jamming on a horn or stringed instrument--some relatively mundane, some amazingly fantastical. Some of the instruments are ones I own and play in waking life (including, particularly, ones I have made). In any case, there's an ecstatic buzz connected with the experience, which is actually not so different from what it's like in waking life.

I started playing trumpet when I was 10 years old, in school. At times my feeling for the instrument was ambivalent, and I put it down for a year or so on a couple of occasions. When I was 21 or 22 I discovered Don Cherry and felt like I'd stepped into an open field where before I'd been in a tunnel. His use of a pocket trumpet inspired me to pick one up, and I found that the experience of playing it was completely different than the standard trumpet (which I never played again afterward). Functionally everything is the same between the two instruments: they have the same range (same length of tubing, only the pocket trumpet is wound in an extra loop to make it more compact), use the same mouthpiece (though some pocket trumpets use a cornet mouthpiece, which is practically the same but not identical). For me, the crucial difference is not simply the sound--the pocket trumpet actually tends to have a slightly rougher tone, and is slightly harder to keep in tune--but the placement, the location of the sound. With this instrument, I feel like it comes directly out of me--from my gut, my lungs, my lip--instead of something happening at a distance, over there somewhere...

This may seem tangential, but actually it's at the heart of any approach to the idea of sacred space--not just because music has always been associated with every sort of sacred experience (never mind the Taleban--the brutality they promote is the opposite), but because any activity that doesn't bring you into a direct experience has lost the game. Why do kids occasionally act bored? Because they can tell the difference between something happening away from them and something they're inside of.

This is also fundamental to addressing global warming. Pollution that people experience directly is much more likely to generate action. People have visceral reactions when they witness a sludge-filled river, when the air stinks and their eyes burn, when their children can't breathe. They may feel constrained from resolving the problem (it's beyond their apparent means) but if given an opportunity they're relatively likely to be motivated to do something about it. But global warming occurs at a distance--certainly a displacement in time, if not location. It is not personally immediate. Even highly intelligent, educated, socially engaged people, while they may take the issue seriously, are subject to more immediate concerns--health and economic survival, for example--that will always displace something occurring at a distance. As it becomes closer to direct experience, the motivation will increase.

Direct experience--full engagement with the activity--does not actually require a nonstop high-intensity focus. It requires a steadiness of attention, receptivity, a flexible ability to seep beyond the edges of the linear melody to absorb the overtone resonances that create the fullness of a full sound. It's an interweaving of absorption and agility. Both the particle and the wave. Sometimes one predominates for a moment, but the ability to deeply hear what your fellow musicians are playing and contribute something not just complementary but harmonious in a way that pulls the whole sound beyond the physical constraints of the mundane world, requires a kind of devotion to the act of creation itself. (Not just an expectation of future reward, though that's been known to motivate people up to a point.)

Actually, the gratification is immediate, when everything weaves together in that magical-seeming way. But it takes hours of practice to get there, even for someone who starts out with above-average capacity (a.k.a. talent, which is helpful but not necessarily the deciding factor). According to a currently popular notion, mastery requires ten thousand hours of dedicated practice to reach. Which sounds about right, but the notion does have some flaws (for example, implications that it's applicable to any activity; that "mastery," or expertise, is quantifiable; that there's an identifiable endpoint to development).

When I was 14 or 15 I started playing guitar. I spent a lot of time with it, and by my mid-twenties I suppose I'd become a passably competent musician, with some rough edges that didn't bother me too much (still don't). By sometime in my thirties I'm sure I'd put in something like ten thousand hours between the horn and guitar, though with all sorts of gaps, so I'm not sure how that adds up. In order to hold my own as a serious professional horn player I'd have to average (by my own estimation) at least four hours a day practicing, and I realized long ago I'm not committed enough to do that.

But what I'm getting at is a bit different from the notion of mastery. The few times I've held to that sort of intensive practice schedule (for three or four months at a stretch, at most--it's sort of hard to maintain if you happen to be employed in some unrelated way, or if you want to see any friends who aren't also standing next to you on stage or sipping a drink alone at a table halfway across the room--sorry, can't talk right now, gotta boo-dap, bdoo-dap, beetu bweetu battadoo-bdap) I have managed to tap into something that I've also experienced from intensive practice in other activities (martial arts, meditation, luthery, writing and house building, at least). This is an experience of cracking a code, of suddenly (or sometimes gradually) noticing that I have an extra set of ears, a new language, a momentary unnameable connection with the original source of energy and consciousness. That's what I mean by engagement. That's an inkling of the idea of "sacred."

Inside out, outside in

2009-04-28T05:09:39Z

Among the better known stories of our species is one that begins in a garden. Not wilderness--which in the particular tradition of this origin story is a harsh desert that may inspire visions but is not really habitable. The garden is a more or less domestic setting. It is full of life, all the animals and plants, fruit-bearing trees (the Hebrew word pardes, orchard, is the origin of the English word "paradise"), the source of abundant living water. It has a place and purpose for people. They tend it, study and categorize animals, talk to a serpent. It is contained. The dangers are ambiguous.

Never mind the reasons. The punishment is exile. Struggle and toil, hard labor and uncertainty. The worst part is being cut off. Longing to return, never being able to return to the source of life, the place of undifferentiated bliss (and easy pickings), no longer assured that the universe is a friendly place. The original suffering.

Of course there are still gardens, there are places we can go, ways we can train ourselves to experience that sense of connectedness, return from exile. In North America, the original inhabitants have always known that the land is alive. Actually, indigenous peoples everywhere have always known this, only (too often) to be dissuaded by swindlers and brutalizers. But the land is alive.

As it happens, most of us spend at least half our time in buildings. In the industrialized worlds, the amount is likely to be much higher--perhaps 90 percent. When you factor in the time we spend in vehicles of some sort, the number is higher still. And if you look at the time we spend in the built environment in general, it's approaching 100 percent.

So it stands to reason that our built environment should be something more satisfactory than the boxes and cubicles that so often try to pass for homes and workplaces. If most of our lives are spent in dead and deadening physical environments, there's little surprise that people would seek out the seductions of television and other stupeficants, or of hysterical religious practices and mass spectator sports. In the first case, it's tuning in to oblivion (which is to say, tuning out). In the second, the attraction is the fervor--the excitement of being part of something beyond the limits of the self. In both cases it's a setting aside of the ego, temporary though that may be. There's an unspoken recognition that the ego arises with exile, is the source or product of it, or at least the recipient of it (a standard Buddhist definition of self is "experiences suffering"--which explains the preference for ending the cycle of rebirth).

The Hebrew word kadosh--typically translated as "holy"--really means set aside, separated. Apart. Not mundane. The idea is that we innately seek ways to move beyond our mundane material struggles and strivings (exile), and make a place for receptivity--for receiving the fullness of life that flows through and around us (the garden). But if deadness surrounds us, there's not much chance of a genuine receptivity.

Deadness = exile. Aliveness = connection. Connection to fellow beings, to ground, spirit, soul.

In this aliveness, this sense of connectedness, is the beginning of a working definition of "sacred." Without it we are vacant automatons capable only of craving excitement or oblivion.