snake heart

“Everything is perfect and there is room for improvement”

I’m back from 10 days at Tassajara.

It felt like a tribal gathering, emissaries from the far winds, coming together to share and learn.

Tassajara means “meat drying place” in old Esalen, and thats what it is. now. A place to dry out, get stretched. Reduce. Boil. Bake. Fill. Split. Harden. Soften. Soak.

Its a Zen monastery, out and up in the Ventana wilderness surrounded by the loud silence only possible in places of deep remote.

No power lines. No homes. No lights.

The clearest night sky in the continental US.

And i was there for the whole full moon and more.

Every morning a being rang a bell running through the central path weaving through the cabins, garden shed and wood shop, past the barns and then all the way back the other way to the baths. They run because your barely aware senses take note when they hear the pounding of feet.

Wordlessly its being signaled to you that it is best you get up now. Greet it all.

Most mornings I took that advice to heart and got up- sometimes to sit in meditation but most often to go to the hot springs before breakfast.

A cool thing about zen is that everything is ok, it is all permissible.

You’re allowed to enter through the back door.

When you first get there, there is a lot of robes, structure, wordless exchanges and sounds signaling worlds you don’t know.

All that made me fussy. Externally I was courteous, pious, devout, contemplative- inside i was thinking man these guys dont know what i know.

How can we not laugh in advance any instance we decide that we have the answers, surely we are spelling out writ large exactly how we will be wrong.

And I was.

Lovingly- I was very wrong. I equated that which i did not understand to be an insufficient system for someone like me! “ I have transcended structure” “zen is not a heart practice” etc etc- I’ll spare myself more embarrassment and say that eventually I saw that Zen is the most thoughtful orientation to what goes on in my interior world that I have ever come across.

And all this is transmitted wordlessly.

Much of the learning comes from the untying of knots you’ve tied around yourself, about who you are, what you do, how things are as you see them.

Perfect example is all the bowing you do. If you cross someones path you bow. Sit down or get up from the communal table-bow. Entering the bath- bow. Entering the toilet- bow. Starting or ending work- bow. Beginning of the meeting and the end- bow. In the meditations you do at least 3 full prostrations.

At first rub its just that, a rub. If you’ve got social hierarchies, expectations or judgments about ANY ONE- you’re going to inevitably bow to them. What a transformation. Its incredibly difficult to hold on to anything but pure acknowledgement when you are bowing to someone. You’ve both agreed to suspend for a moment what ever else is going on and see each other. And you learn this by doing.

Then you learn not to rush.

Its never said but you get the sense immediately that this is not a place where you run unless its for exercise (outside of the grounds) or to do the morning wake up. Longtimers there glide. There’s no hurried energy. I poured concrete and helped move a honey bee swarm- no rise out any one. Calm, clear, purposeful joy drove the work. We miss out on the marrow of “doing” by rushing. An invisible clock tells us there is never enough time, and also infinite time to squeeze things in.

At Tassarjara a large bell is rung and that means “stop”.

Whatever you were working on will be there tomorrow, and you dont find yourself biting off more than you can chew because looking around you witness all activities done with great care, you emulate that. I brush-cut and weed-whacked with great care. I made bamboo curtain rods to the best of my ability. I cleaned every inch of a cabin.

I was content because I was fully engaged with no where else to be and no way of doing anything else.

I had to be no one.

I was reminded while away at of the pivotal shift in my life taking on the name Bholenath. Most of life’s changes are slow erosions and sometimes a whole chunk of the bank gives way- thats what it was like to take on the name Bholenath.

It was this grand gift to assemble myself under a new banner after 30+ years as Ian. I was no longer held to any expectations, I had no history with anyone. No remembering to do, no hidden borders, no context. I could be anything, with one very poignant reminder- to be simple.

Bhole means simple.

While I was at Tassarjara I got to witness a friend take vows to free all beings, and receive a spiritual name. Prior, we’d discussed the precipice they stood on, including the new horizons that come from identifying as an embodiment of who they are now. It is not without trepidation does one approach beginning anew.

Taking on a new name can mean you drop alot of baggage, and press on with fresh orientation and you still will be coming to grips for some time, what it means to be you now, with this palimpsest of you then still in your field of awareness.

Its a new level of work, its a fresh dawn.

Though my name came from a different lineage and orientation, the purpose of taking on a name feels the same- you’re given a name by a teacher because its your work, you get a name when you’re ready to ready to confront your ego for the betterment of yourself and all beings. When how you are known in this world can change, you realize everything else is just free.

That’s what I’ve come to learn about Zen.

Nothing and everything is happening all the time.

cold plunge,

Bholenath

Also If you’d like to talk about earth, rest, ayurveda, reiki, san francisco, bodywork, psychedelic integration, or something else, please please, please reach out via the link below- it is free 

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Altar Of Now, based in San Francisco, is the work and calling of Bholenath.