On Sitting Still and Moving Everything

It has been SO LONG since I’ve updated! But now you guys get a treat: a double post! When you’re done reading this one, keep on going, the fun don’t stop.

Well I’m off the monastery now. 6 months flew by super fast, and now I’m out in the cold, on my own. Actually, it’s not that bad. But I am out on my own, and couldn’t be happier. My time at the monastery was great and I really appreciate everything I saw and learned, but now I’m ready to get out and see New Zealand, open myself up to whatever experiences come my way, and plain rough it every once in a while.

The last few days at the monastery were busy (surprise, surprise). We were lucky enough to have Luang Por Piak, a meditation master from Thailand, come to visit the monastery for 10 days, during which time we had a 4 day retreat. Luang Por is very well respected in Thailand, so the other monastery residents and I were very fortunate to be able to spend lots of time up close and personal with him. I haven’t really refined the ability to ‘see’ a meditator’s attainments, but there was definitely an air about Luang Por that reflected a vast wisdom. I mean, I couldn’t actually understand what he was saying because he was speaking Thai the whole time, but between the translation and his body language I was able to pick up a few tips on meditation, lifestyle, and the art of cool.

From the monastery I got a ride to the city, spent a night in the area, then started hitching north. I had made plans for WWOOFing (an acronym for “willing workers on organic farms,” basically a work-exchange program for food and a place to stay) at an ecovillage in Kaiwaka, about an hour’s drive from the city. I really didn’t know where exactly this place was, or if it would be easy to get to or not, but I did know I had one real heavy bag, one pretty heavy bag, each containing a few expensive items, and a didgeridoo. A friend at the monastery had made me the didge just before I left and I was learning to play it, so it was my new travel companion. Since the area was only about an hour away, I thought I’d have a pretty easy time of moving…but it was a bit complicated. I think I caught 4 different rides just to get to the area. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world, and I fully appreciate the rides, but I was beginning to get a bit warn out, usually spending more time loading and unloading than actually riding. If you're considering hitch hiking anytime soon, here's my tip: tie everything together at all times. You might end up accidentally dragging something important on the ground, but better to drag it than leave it on the side of a random country road, like you would have.

Eventually I made it to Kaiwaka, but it was looking like rain and I still had to find the house, which was about 7 km outside of town. So I started hustling down the road as efficiently as possible, using what energy I had left to hope for a car to drive down this long country road. All that hoping paid of quickly though, because I not only got picked up, but the driver was driving to the same ecovillage! So I loaded and unloaded my stuff one more time and settled into my new home: an eco-friendly, sustainable 2 bedroom with an earth floor (yep, dried mud with a sealant) on 2 acres of land with a nice garden and beach access, all within a 70 hectares ecovillage with 15 other houses. As a bonus I had access to two kayaks, so I could work on my double kayak tricks. The work was always really simple: a few days of weed pulling, a day of bridge building, a day of tree planting, a day of shelf building, and a day of apple picking…suspiciously similar to my jobs on the monastery. Another perk of staying at the ecovillage was that my host, Don, is a mediator, so I was able to meditate with him daily and we could talk about the kind of things meditators talk about, like lolcats and arbitrary experiences. The other village residents were all very cool too and all very unique, as you may expect to find at any alternative-lifestyle venue. One other house had another WWOOFer from the UK, so I even had a buddy to kayak with, share travel experiences, deliberate on the pronunciation of vowels and the letter R, and try to arrange further travels. The most important part of my stay, however, was my utter lack of responsibility. I can’t really say I was ever stressed out at the monastery, but I was partially in charge of many aspects of how the property ran and looked, and man was I happy to not have to worry about any of that. I’ll tell you, I read two books, completed several drawings, wrote heaps in my journal, and thoroughly enjoyed extended tea times. There wasn’t even a TV to distract me, so I had all the time I wanted to complete whatever secondary task came to mind. So yes, it was a very slow stay, but that was exactly what I was hoping for.

After 10 days of relaxing in the country, I felt I was ready to return to the city, or the Big Smoke, as they call it (don’t ask my why…?). Remember those punks I met when I first got here? Those kids I met on the internet. Well, I’ve been consistently hanging out with them since our first encounter, and when they heard I was coming to the city and was looking for a place to stay and a good time, they opened up their doors. How cool is that? Great dudes. So for 10 days, I played Wii bowling, listened to lots of ska music, ate free weet-bix, slept in ‘til whenever I pleased, and participated in a party called Deep Fry-day. As the name may suggest, one Friday evening my buddy Joe brought over his deep fryer and we began testing our stomachs’ junk-food-processing abilities. We.deep.fried.every.thing. It all started with some chips, which are not chips at all, but rather fries, and quickly moved to doughnuts. We agreed the doughnuts were put into play a little too early in the game, so we reared back to onion rings, and followed those up with a Milkyway bar. Now, don’t ask me who decided doughnuts were too much while Milkyways were good to go, but it was clearly time for a break. I ate a carrot to balance myself out, then we went back in for some tater-tots and a couple samosas (little curried vegetable pastry things). If you ever want to have a deep fry-day I would definitely suggest you incorporate Wii bowling, because it’s not so active as to make you sick to your stomach, yet just active enough to prevent you from going into a fry coma… this is a delicate, yet important balance, as your body will be simultaneously overwhelmed with the urges to sprint to the toilet to ralph it all AND curl up in a ball on the couch to die happily. You see, the Wii bowling tricks you into thinking there is a low-impact, ever-competitive meaning to life: pure brilliance. The fryer stayed hot and the oil flowed like wine, but I had to cash out while I was ahead and went for a PB & J while I watched the rest of the fools fry themselves into oblivion. A good time was had by all, but the fry champ was this skinny girl with bangs and proper speech patterns who ate everything that came her way and was asking for more…who would have thunk it.

A week passed where I didn’t do a whole lot of interesting things, and then V48 came. V48 is a 48 hour movie making competition put on by V, a New Zealand energy drink (problem? :D). So the dudes (they’re not all dudes, but that’s my affectionate name for them) and I gathered all of our movie making supplies and went to the orientation to collect information. Our mission: create a 7 minute or less movie about a super hero; one character’s name must be Bobby; there must be an image of a bent wire; and the line “What have you got” must be included. V also gave us an entire case of V for free. It took less than two hours to come up with our story and write the entire script, so you can probably guess the [very high] quality of our efforts. Let me just give you a line of the theme song that explains the entire scenario in less than one minute: “Magnetman, he attracts and repels things at random, man.” You may say something silly like, “That doesn’t sound like a magnet at all, magnets are consistent with the items they attract and repel,” but you’d be mistaken, that theory is simply untrue when it comes to Magnetman. He attracts and repels (randomly) everything from empty V cans to paper towels, paint brushes to girls, empty beer boxes to push brooms, cell phones to medieval swords. Catch my drift? And his arch enemy, Louis, is pretty much just jealous. And I don’t want to give anything away, but the ending has a twist…which may or may not be a character who appears for the final 2 seconds who has never been seen or mentioned before. New Zealand has put out a lot of great film makers and film producers, but I’m telling you, the dudes are going straight to the top with this one. I mostly played an extra because of my obscure American accent, but it was a great experience, and we somehow managed to pull all the shots together, edited them on a program that only crashed at the least opportune moments, and turned in the final product with 10 minutes to spare. Then it was back to Wii bowling. We showed the parents of some of my friends, but they all failed to recognize both the humor and the drama and just looked at us inquisitively. Some people just don’t understand art.

After 48 hours of movie making, energy drinking madness, we were all ready to crash. I stayed for two more days and felt it was time to move on. I truly enjoyed the time spent, but all my friends had finals and junk going on, and I’m just not into that these days. So I packed my things and hit the road again, heading south with my sights set on what’s known as the Southern Alps. As predicted, the city was very difficult to get through, but once I made it out to the country I had better luck. The day was getting late though, and I was hoping to make it to Wellington, still 6 hours south of where I was. I began looking for inconspicuous areas to set up my tent, when I got picked up by a family who was not headed at all in my direction. They were, however, headed out to the Coromandel, an area I hadn’t seen yet, and if there’s any perks to hitch hiking, it’s the random opportunities that get thrown your way. “You’re never going to make it down to Wellington… you’ll be lucky to make it to the next town before it gets dark. You’ll come back and stay at our house and we’ll bring you to a good hitching spot tomorrow.” I accepted graciously, assuring them, “I’ll help out with cooking, and do all your dishes!,” but they had a crockpot on and a dishwasher under the sink, so that made my life easy. The did, however, have 200 cows to be milked at 5:30 AM and happily accepted my offer to help out with that. If you think Morgan Hill, CA smells like cow shit everywhere, you should try standing at utter-level of a couple hundred cows for a few hours. At first I was naturally a little nervous around the beasts, but Terry, one of the daughters, showed me the ropes and I slowly started learning the tricks of the trade. After a hot shower and a beef lunch made out of dearly departed cow #156, Dane (the dad) drove me out to a main road and wished me luck. A few hours and a few rides later, I found myself in Taupo, a resort town, and decided to spend the night to see what came my way. When I checked into the hostel, the guy at the desk said, “OH man! You just missed out on a car of 4 girls going to Wellington…they just left a few hours ago.” Yeah, likely story guy. Anyway, I had a pleasant night and wound up meeting two guys from Belfast who were driving to Wellington the next day, so I offered to pitch some gas money. I was glad I found those guys, because the road between Taupo and Welly was long and desolate. We all booked into the same hostel that night in the city and went out for a bite. Since that night, I’ve been in or around the city, seeing the sights and spending all of my money. Wellington is actually a really cool place with lots of really cool people, although it is soo windy and is becoming increasingly cold at night. That tells me that the winter is coming and that I should get to the mountains before all the jobs are taken. The plan is to jump over to the South Island tomorrow and work at an organic winery for a few weeks, then get to Wanaka near Queenstown to find a job and an abode for the snow season…we’ll see how it actually plays out. So until next time, miss you all (somebody should come visit for snowboarding season), hope you’re all good, and remember: Magnetman will always do a half-assed job of protecting you (if it's not too much of an inconvenience), man!

Total F@<&ing Catastrophe

Recently (well, a while ago), Ajahn and I went on another tudong together, but don’t worry, that wasn’t the total f@<&ing catastrophe. I’ll get to that in a minute, but since it’s been such a long time (and because you might assume all I’ve been doing lately is wandering around), let me give you a run down of what’s been happening lately: a stupa is being built, a garage has been built, several new trails and roads have been built, dozens of pine trees have been felled, a few new bridges have been built, several new water tanks have been installed, and lots of new piping went into the ground…and those were just the “big projects.” We didn’t do all of this ourselves, we’ve had handfuls of contractors in and out for some stuff, but this means that we’ve had to juggle everybody who comes in as well as keep our own projects running smoothly. Contractors are a big help, especially for the projects that don’t come naturally to a monk and a few meditators, but we also kept our hands busy with several minor projects along with the normal monastery upkeep. As usual, there has been plenty going on to keep us out of boredom’s grip, but every day I’ve been impressed with the rapid pace of progress around the property. It also makes every moment of meditation time that much more precious.

Somehow, in the midst of all of this mad development, Ajahn and I found 10 days in early April that did not require our presence, so we packed our things and slipped out the back door for a little tudong wandering. This tudong was great, similar in some ways to my tudong with Mudito, but a bit slower paced. We spent the majority of most days in solitary meditation, which was great and a welcome period of relaxation. We headed north, spending the first few days in the Waitakere range, an area I have come to know and love well, and continued north from there. Ajahn has gone on tudong a few times up north, so he has a few contacts who we called in on during our travels-- an always interesting experience. As you might guess, a Buddhist monk, with his unconventional lifestyle, tends to attract others living outside of the norm… which is a vast expanse. The common thread among all of these folks was the fact that they were all meditators attempting to live their lives in a conscious manor, which is totally respectable and exciting, but that broad description is about the extent of the similarities. Living consciously is very important in any day and age, particularly now with all of our opportunities and challenges, but I quickly discovered that different conscious people can be conscious of very, very different aspects of life. The first of our conscious contacts was a really cool cell biologist, university professor, public speaker, New York Times best seller, and fellow American named Dr. Bruce Lipton. After a period of 20 years of research, Dr. Lipton stumbled upon a way to prove how our conditioning, beliefs, and outlook on life affects our cells (ie: our health, well-being, and biological make-up), as opposed to the common belief that only genes control our cells. Bruce has gone on to present his findings, as well as his suggestions of the importance of mindfulness and conscious existence (essentially the fundamental basis of Buddhism) to crowds all over the US, Australia, NZ, and Europe, and has become a key figure in the field of what he calls “New Biology.” Anyway, aside from all these impressive credentials, he’s a real cool and funny guy, and he and his wife gave us a ton of free food which is always a major bonus while on tudong. We had a great visit with Bruce and his wife full of interesting discussions that a conscious biologist and mindful monk may have, but let me get to my catastrophic point: Bruce is pretty sure that most American citizens, and western cultures in general, are in fact NOT living very consciously, and thus our economic system and materialistic way of life will very soon change very drastically and, boom, TOTAL F@<&ING CATASTROPHY!!! He actually happens to see this as a somewhat positive thing, as it will wake people up to what’s really important in life, but once the catastrophe hits, things ain’t going to be pretty for a while. He encouraged us at the monastery to prepare for such an event by preparing a year or two worth of supplies: food being the big one, as well as lumber, hardware, warm clothing, and so on. Ajahn and I agreed that, hey, it wouldn’t hurt and there is plenty of land on the monastery, and in fact Ajahn has already been stocking basic supplies for the last couple of years. You don’t have to be a survivalist conspiracy theorist to want to survive during the catastrophe, right?

Interestingly, as we went along meeting up with each of our contacts, they were each as friendly, warm, energetic, welcoming… and each had their own theory for TOTAL F@<&ING CATASTROPHY! (TFC for short). Funny enough, those exact words were used on more than one occasion. Each theory was pretty unique, but there was a general consensus that we are on the brink of a major change. By the way, do you know about the secret history of milk? Apparently, raw milk from a good source is actually much better for you than pasteurized milk, and can actually help prevent many diseases, but politics, debates, conflicting farmers, conflicting doctors, payoffs, assassinations, and espionage (ok, maybe not those last two) lead to pasteurization becoming the standard and thus our belief that it’s the only safe way. I drank raw milk and ate natural yoghurt made from raw milk for two days, provided by John, our host in Whangarei, and I felt great. Please don’t take my word for it, remember I can write anything I want, I’m just a guy on the internet, but do some research, become aware! The history of pasteurized milk may not be part of the TFC, but it’s an interesting history which can be confirmed, and is an example of something that I took for granted as a safety issue, but in fact has a deeper story which I only just discovered. That’s why it’s worth it to live consciously, aware of what you eat and drink, what you wear, where you live, how you live, and what you require to live. I eat grains a lot, you probably do too… it’s pretty basic sustenance for, like, yeah everybody, but do you know where your grains are produced? Do you know how to produce grain? If you wanted to, could you grow enough grains in your immediate area to survive on? Never mind the rest of the food I want/need in my diet, how the hell do I get what I consider to be my most basic food and what if something happened to that source or the transportation between me and it? Alright, so this is beginning to sound like some survivalist conspiracy theory again… but it doesn’t hurt to ask, right? Better to think about it once for a second then never think about it at all, because it’s interesting anyway and it’s something that is part of my life every single day.

Like I said, as we went along, the list of things to become conscious of and the potential TFCs became increasingly long. Have you heard of chem trails? Look it up. Peak oil? Look it up. Sources of fresh water, and the decline of fresh water? Look it up. Global warming/climate change is pretty well discussed these days, but look it up some more anyway. Japan is a good example of the potential downfalls of nuclear power; where is the closest nuclear power plant? Are the emergency plans for that plant any better than in Japan? And how about Planet X? Look it up. Even if you don’t want to buy into any of these speculations, the weather, just look at the weather. And then of course there’s always the dirty, God-awful terrorists (or socialists or non-conformists or whatever -ists we’re targeting these days) lurking in the shadows. I’m telling you people, TOTAL F@<&ING CATASTROPHY! It’s around every corner. So look, not even counting the general benefits of living mindfully, you might become aware of how your actions may be contributing to a future TFC, or how your life would change if one hit, and what you might have to do to survive. There are a ton of conspiracy theories out there, but the real conspirator COULD BE YOU! You just have to look at how you live your life and the implications your lifestyle holds. Conspiracy theories are meant to point blame at one person or organization or conglomeration, but the fact is that those bad people, organizations, and conglomerations are probably part of the system you pump your hard earned dollars into. Check yourself before you wreck yourself, yo. It’s hard to do, I’m just as guilty as most, but that doesn’t mean we can’t start, today, to pay more attention.

So after hearing all of these TFC scenarios, I was a little torn about which one I was rooting for. I mean each one is as unlikely (or likely!) as the other, and I can’t realistically prepare for ALL of them, so I might as well just go ahead and put all of my eggs in one TFC basket, right? I was mentally going down the list, trying to rule out the ones that seemed irrational or not fun (no use preparing for a lame TFC), when Armin, a German in Kerikeri gave me the bamboo scenario. Listen to this, it’s going to change your entire life. Apparently, every 80 to 120 years bamboo flowers and goes to seed. Some species are more frequent, like every 18 years or so, but for the vast majority it’s up there around 100 years. This is a natural defense for the bamboo, because rodents and stuff like to eat the seeds, so rather than spending a lot of energy every year producing seeds just to be eaten, the bamboo (somehow) organizes itself to do one massive, orchestrated flowering to catch the rodents by surprise and ensure at least a few [thousand] seeds germinate. Alright, that totally makes sense and totally works for natural bamboo forests. But think about how much bamboo we have planted all over the world, and how much bamboo has come to places it has never been before 80 years ago. The theory goes: Any day now (because we’re well within the potential flowering time), all that bamboo is going to flower at the same time, all throughout the world, and is going to set millions of seeds all over all of our most fertile land (crops, grazing land, native forests, totally unique ecosystems, etc). The seeds will take off, and if you know anything about bamboo, you know most species send out runners and it spreads like disease, choking out other plant life, and is terribly difficult to control… here comes the chorus, put your hands up in the air and sing it with me: “TOTAL F@<&ING CATASTROPHY!” Nuclear holocaust, global warming, burning down the rainforest to raise Burger King cattle, feverously depleting non-renewable natural resources? No, man’s downfall was none of these things those brainiack hippie scientists predicted and gave us so much grief about. Man’s downfall was bamboo’s natural defense mechanism. You could even say we were…BAMBOOZOLED??!! (if nothing else in this blog post has made you LOLz, you have to give it up for that one)

So the point is that life as we know it could end any time for any one reason from a mile long list of logical and illogical reasons. I’m not saying life could end at any time—well, actually it could, but we’re not concerned with that because our hands are kinda tied if we’re dead anyway. But life as we know it could end, meaning you might not be able to get your grain from the same place, you might not be able to rely on gasoline or propane as heavily, you might have to learn very quickly how to survive without the tools you use for survival right now. If major farming operations became obsolete, would you know how to produce food? Most important in my mind is that human beings have been learning and passing on information about how to survive for thousands of years, but within the last few generations, it seems to me that we’ve let most of that information fall away from us. Yes, there are easier and more effect ways of life and production than ever before, and it makes complete sense to live within the capabilities of our improvements, but man, what if something changes? Many people, including me, would have a very difficult time adjusting, but it may come down to a do/know/learn or die situation. Like I’ve said, if nothing else, I find it interesting and beneficial to look at and be mindful of my daily actions and necessities, find out how those things affect me and the world around me, and try to fathom how I might be able to adjust to radical changes if they were to come. Don’t get scared, please don’t start buying guns and stocking ammo, don’t invest in secret underground layers, don’t build an escape pod to the moon; just get real. AND STOP PLANTING BAMBOO!

Ajahn Adventures & Tudong: The Wandering (This is going to be a long one…)

Oh boy it’s been busy around the monastery lately. Along with a few short-term residents in and out, we had a major two-day ceremony with around 200+ attendees each day. It was a pretty wild time, although with all those people came heaps of good vibes and high spirits. Everybody came to see our massive collection of relics which Ajahn Chandako has been collecting for years; I was pretty unaware of the importance of Buddhist relics, but apparently in Asia often thousands of people show up to check out a relic or two on display… we have literally dozens. So many, we had to use a dinner table to display them all. If, like me, you have no idea what a Buddhist relic is, my basic understanding is that it is the energy of enlightened meditation masters which manifests as physical matter, usually in the form of a small rock, jewel, or crystal. Now, you may already know that Buddhist believe in rebirth, but you may not know that once you become enlightened, you don’t get reborn anymore; in other words, you are able to escape samsara, or the cycle of suffering in life. On a quantum physics side note, today scientists know that atoms are made up of invisible vortices of energy and are actually spinning and vibrating at unique frequencies, meaning individual atoms a) don't have a physical structure like the Newtonian model we were brought up with, and b) they're mostly made up of empty space; essentially atoms are little balls of vibrating energy, and thus physical matter is composed of energy (1, 2). So when you think about the very pure energy that a meditation master creates and [potentially] throws into the universe upon the death of his/her body, and then think about how physical matter is made up of certain atoms vibrating at certain frequencies, there seems to be some connection there… or something. Where can you find a little piece of meditation energy, you may ask? Well, apparently these relics spontaneously appear for certain people during their meditation practice, and can also spontaneously disappear if treated disrespectfully. So most of these relics that Ajahn has were given to him by people who stumble upon them after a particularly special meditation sesh. With such ambiguity and mystery surrounding them, obviously there are a lot of fake relics out there… but luckily living meditation masters can in fact confirm if a relic is legit or not. Still a skeptic? That’s cool, you can do some more of your own research or something, or just not believe it; I got plenty more to talk about.

If relics are a little too much to get your head around, here’s a fact that’s based pretty firmly in the physical world: with 200+ people eating lunch at the monastery, I had 200+ plates, bowls, forks, knives, spoons, cups, mugs, et cetera, et cetera (yep, two etc’s) to wash by hand. Initially I tried to meditate with the dirty dishes for a while to see if they would spontaneously manifest as clean dishes… but no luck. Thankfully, there was a crew of some good-natured volunteers to help me, and we worked out a nice little system of rinsers, washers, dryers, and stackers to power through the daunting pile. So, with the dishes in order, everybody had a nice weekend and many were inspired by the presence of the relics.

Oh, I also forgot to mention the 12 straight days I worked to clean, tidy, mow, organize, reorganize, and otherwise prepare the monastery before the crowds even showed up. I was pretty worked, and pretty tired of work, for sure. But relief came one day when Ajahn asked, “Hey, you want to go for a hike? We should hike the creek, you haven’t been down there yet, right?”

“Nope, haven’t been yet, let’s do it.”

“Great,” he said, “I’ll get the goat, you should grab some loppers, it’s really a jungle down there.”

10 minutes later, a monk, a goat, and a scruffy kid with a machete in hand set off on an adventure. I mean… the scenarios that come together on this monastery… you just can’t make this stuff up. I should also mention that Lucky is a super awesome goat and is happy to just follow us wherever we go without a leash. He’s like a well-trained dog, but better because he climbs hills like a champ and we don’t have to clean up his poop. So Ajahn and I fight our way through the bush down to the creek in the back of the property. Nobody ever goes down there, so it’s grown in pretty thick and there’s no trail; I was going to town with the machete. I’ve had some pretty great bush experiences since I’ve been in NZ, but this was the definition of bush wacking. For long portions, we simply walked in the stream, as it was easier than scrambling through the foliage on the bank. Plus, I wasn’t trying to like demolish the bush… I enjoyed using the machete, because, let’s admit, it’s pretty fun and I felt like a real adventurer, but there is definitely a little magic to a bit of nature left untouched. It was also interesting to see how certain species of plants taker over certain plots: one area was full of long vines hanging down and knotting themselves up, then there was a section of tall razor grass (which is really uncomfortable to walk through), followed by a plot of ferns, and so on. Of course there was a little intermingling, but the plants seemed generally segregated in a way, I think mostly because (logically) certain areas are suited for certain plants, so they thrive there and dominate, pushing out other flora. But anyway, it was like walking through 5 different types of jungles in one walk, pretty cool. And let’s not forget Lucky, who doesn’t like water, so chose to take the high road along the steep valley walls. It worked out pretty well for him because, well that’s kind of his natural lifestyle, but being a young goat, and one who doesn’t get out much by goat standards, every once in a while he would come toppling down. That was always pretty funny to see particularly when he took a splash into the stream and then freaked. I’m learning that goats are very particular little beasts. After tromping our way upstream for a while, we finally came to the first pool, which was preceded by a considerably large waterfall: probably about 15-20 feet tall. Even after being here for four months now, I discover something new on the monastery property almost weekly. So Ajahn and I scrambled our way up the waterfall, first climbing on a fallen tree, then scaling up the edge, and, near the top, just right up the middle. When we got up there, we looked down and Lucky was like “Uhh guys? You’re not serious right? Comon back down… lets go… comon…….really?” With a few encouraging words and beckoning hand motions, he started up the log and made it surprisingly far until a major tumble into the waterfall, down its face, and into the pool. Oh man, that was one unhappy goat. Throughout a normal day, Lucky has a number of strange and often obnoxious songs which he sings at the top of his lungs, but after the tumble he was screaming like I’ve never heard before. Poor guy. So Ajahn climbed back down to console him, and together they found an alternate route… coincidently, Ajahn almost tumbled down trying to follow the goat’s path. After we collected ourselves, we continued upstream, on to a few more deep pools, another waterfall, and eventually pushed up to a pool where even Ajahn hadn’t been yet. Being the first one to lay eyes on it, I staked my claim by declaring it Edgar’s suwammin’ hol’. After a few moments relaxing at the hol’, we continued up and finally popped out of the bush into a marsh, where we were able to easily climb right back up to the main road towards the front of the property. Lucky was dry, Ajahn was happy to have finally treked the whole stream, and I had not chopped of my own hand with the machete, so all in all it was a great little adventure. Unexpected and full of quiet wonders, I yet again had a completely unique experience within the monastery property.

Our little excursion was pretty great, but I still had a lot of work for the following few days, and of course ultimately the weekend of hundreds. I pretty well enjoyed myself throughout, but I was ready for a real break. I gladly took the day following the ceremony to lounge about, but you know I’m all about new experiences on this trip, so Venerable Mudito, another monk here on the monastery, and I set off on a short Tudong. Tudong is an aspect of practice in the Thai Forest Tradition where monks wander out with no money, no food, and no plan other than to find peaceful environments in which to meditate. Generally this is done on foot and the monks simply go on alms round daily for food, but since we only had four days, we decided to take the car to make it a little easier to find those hard to reach, way off the grid spots. Since we had a car, and Kiwis are generally unaware of the concept of alms rounds, we took some food too… aside from these two things, though, we were going to follow the guidelines of no plans, only solitude. I hit the motorway south into Hamilton, then saw the turnoff for Raglan, a beach town, and headed west. Mudito is a pretty easy going guy… so easy going it’s sometimes hard to find his opinion on things, so I pretty much took the reigns, which meant that I stopped at every nature walk, scenic reserve, waterfall, historic landmark, and sometimes just rocks that looked cool. In the first day, we took an hour hike to the top of a hill with a sweet view, saw a 150 meter waterfall, cruised through a wind farm, swung through little Raglan where I chased around some camera-shy crabs, gazed off the edge of a massive gorge, followed a random dirt road for 45 minutes, and found ourselves meditating on a beach void of any other humans as the sun dipped below the ocean’s horizon. We weren’t really sure if camping on this beach was legit or not, but if our level of doubt on the legality of beach camping was 5, our level of doubt that anybody would actually come check was 10, so we went for it. Good choice, because nobody came and when we got up at 7, we had about 6 hours of just sitting, walking, meditating, and ruminating all undisturbed. By about 1pm, the clouds broke and it immediately became unbearably hot, so we packed up and hit the dusty trail.

With such a peaceful start to the day, both Venerable and I were quite quiet and content. Generally, meditative lifestyles exclude music or regular news feeds, so we neglected to use the radio. For me, the radio/cd player is usually a road trip staple; sometimes it’s why you go on a road trip. But, even with no music and very little conversation, there was a great vibe in the car and it was neither boring nor awkwardly quiet, nor lonely or in need of anything more. The scenery certainly didn’t hurt, but it was really interesting for me to be driving in a quite car and feel totally at ease. After a while following the dirt road, we found ourselves at Kawhia, a small and very quiet fishing village. I saw a few guys on the dock cleaning a boat, but other than that, no soul was present in downtown at 2pm on a Thursday. Nevertheless, it seemed an interesting little place, so we used their public toilet, donated our garbage to their dumpster, I took a picture of a boat, and we rolled on. The road, now paved, wound around the edge of Kawhia’s bay and back inland. I can’t recall right now, but somehow we ended up back on a dirt road… I was pretty much shooting for places that no other tourist would think to bother with. In fact, I was quite successful in this endeavor, because as we realized we had no idea where we were or where we were heading, we discovered that we had no map depicting the road we were on. Our most detailed map didn’t even include our general area. So yeah, we were pretty out there. As we wandered to its fullest extent through farmland and unnamed bush along an apparently non-existent dirt road, I saw what appeared to be an overgrown, unmarked, ungated driveway. We slid to a halt and I broke the silence to inform Mudito, “We’re gonna check that out.” The 100 meter overgrown driveway lead to a small clearing backed up by endless bush with little sign of recent human activity, so I went back for the car, and as Mudito made sure the coast was clear, I pulled in and nestled the car between some bushes. Alright, now I’m not trying to encourage anybody to trespass, and neither Mudito nor I were out to illegally tromp all over somebody’s land… but keep in mind we had no money to pay for lodging, nor did we want to be in an environment with other people. New Zealand is a great backpacker’s country, and thus has lots of cheap places to stay with lots of cool people, but those places generally are full of people with different motives than a monk on Tudong. Namely, partying/dancing/drinking/discussing/hooting/hollering/bikinis, versus meditating. We just wanted a little quietude to unobtrusively meditate in the forest. So anyway, with the car stashed away, Venerable and I parted ways and climbed into the bush. I found a little spot to lay my tent and gave myself a bit of time to scribble in my journal before settling into some sitting, eventually laying down as the moon rose. I was happy to find my old friends the possoms were out and about, no doubt relatives of my tipi-climbing friends back home, as they appeared to climb the trees around me and occasionally fall onto my tent. Those possoms. After a while I had to get out the stern voice, and was subsequently left alone.

I climbed out of the bush at 7:30 to find Venerable patiently waiting to receive some food. We cooked up a bit, packed our things and hit the road, though we had to again face the reality that we really had no idea where this road would take us. Eventually we reached another bay, much larger than Kawhia’s bay, though no more populated. The road took us around the bay and dumped onto a paved road, where we were finally able to get our bearings. Once we did find our place on the map, we realized we were near Waitomo, which is cave country, so we began searching for caves to explore. In Thailand, caves are a very common place to practice meditation on Tudong, so Mudito was all about it. We did find a couple of caves, but since we were on a more popular road, there were a few people at each cave, and so we decided to just do a bit of exploring and move on. We also found a massive waterfall that was awesome, probably one of the best I’ve seen since my time in NZ. It was very wide and had lots of rock shelves for the water to crash and splash off of. It looked like something they try to reproduce at Disneyland as the generic ‘beautiful, majestic waterfall,’ except it was the real deal. Pretty great. After admiring for a while, we moved on in search for a place without other tourists; we weren’t like bitter about having other people around, they were enjoying the sights just as we were, but the purpose of Tudong is to get out of the mainstream. Our big break came when I saw a wooden sign that said Apple Tree Road. The sign was a bit small and rather decrepit, quite different than the normal road signs, so I figured this was our route. Yet another dirt road led to a metal sign that said something about how the Queen of England was going to get pissed if we camped on the land, and we weren’t allowed to steal any of the trees from the pine plantation, but we could walk around Cave Road and Double Waterfalls if we wanted to. Sweet, sounds good, thanks Queen of England. The road continued through the aforementioned pine plantation to a sign that said “Double Waterfall” with an arrow. Alright, if you say so. The road narrowed and narrowed until we agreed it was time to leave the car behind and continue on foot… little did we know what we were getting ourselves into. An hour and a half into following trail makers (not a trail, there was no trail, just orange markers nailed to trees in the bush) we thought the Queen had laid out the ultimate dupe for some foolish Buddhist wanderers. We hadn’t even seen a creek yet, how was this going to lead to a waterfall?? Finally though, another sign read “Double Waterfall à 20 Min” so we followed a few more orange makers until we heard the sound of falling water! I climbed down a steep embankment to find, you guessed it, a waterfall… but not a very impressive one. Pretty standard actually. And what’s this double about? That Queen! The Duper!! But no, Mudito explored a bit and found a few more markers, leading down to the second waterfall, and then…how can I put this into words… the most magical place on earth. At the foot of the second waterfall, the area opened up to a huge limestone flat blanketed with green mosses. As we followed the stream a little further down, we were surprised to find another stream of equal flow not just intersect our stream, but literally crash into it from the opposite direction, then the two tumbled through a jumble of limestone nooks and crannies and down to a field of limestone boulders. I’ve never seen two streams literally run into each other head on, and it didn’t really make sense to me at first, I thought my eyes were somehow misinterpreting something. But I followed the opposing stream up for a while, and in fact it was its own independent system that just came from the other direction. The large open limestone flat had seemingly endless unique formations and pools, formed by the erratic splashing of the two streams throwing the water in different directions, as well as stacks of pancake limestone and little caves all over full of stalactites and stalagmites. Every piece of limestone was like some wacky free-form art, seemingly abstract but with powerful sweeps and dips and forms refined by decades of wind, rain, and something that appreciates beauty. I don’t know, there was something special about that place. And clearly nobody had been down there for a while, because the moss, which covered everything, appeared all untouched and thriving. Mudito and I each wandered in different directions to find comfortable enclaves to sit and observe, and wonder just how the Queen of England found this place. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a special Maori place, so maybe they let her in on the secret. After a while of appreciating the area in its entirety and trying to explore a bit while treading lightly, we remembered just how long it took to get here, saw that the sun was well on its way down, and recollected the metal sign about how the Queen ain’t down with overnighters on her sacred spot, so we hastily began the long walk back. After a long, tiring walk, we made it back to the car and tried to search the map for a place to hide out overnight. I kind of felt like a fugitive on the run, or some old west outlaw or something. I’ll tell you though, it’s no use looking at a map for a hideout… if it’s on a map, you’re probably pretty easy to find. We got back on the main road and began peering as far down side roads as we could, searching for the right place. I found another dirt road with three mailboxes at the entrance and headed in—clearly it was farmland, so there would be plenty of open space, and clearly there were only three houses, so we just had to find those three houses and stay away from them. Passed one, two, three, drove for 10 more minutes, and pulled to the side of the road overlooking a sheep pasture and an expansive valley. Mudito and I both noted the natural beauty of the area and how only the sheep were around to appreciate it… in reality, we were just giving the land its due respect by taking the time to give it a few oohs and awws. Just after the sun went down, a farmer drove by on an ATV, accompanied by three sheep dogs that had somehow negotiated riding on the two back fenders. Mudito happened to be outside doing something, so the farmer had a strange look on his face as he came across a skinny brown-robed man hanging out next to his sheep, but I gave a friendly wave, he gave a nod and continued on, and we never saw him again. We bunked down in the car for the night and agreed to leave as soon as the sun came up in order to avoid intrusion/suspicion.

The sky began lighting up around 6 and I awoke to find Mudito meditating in the back of the car, so I shifted over to the driver’s seat and cranked up the engine. We drove out to an official lookout with picnic tables and whatnot to cook up our food, admire the view, and watch a line of cars drive towards workplaces. Again, the two of us were quiet and contemplative and it was nice to greet the sun on its way up. It was our last day, but we were in no rush really to get back. When we were good and ready and the traffic had died down a bit, we climbed in the car and started driving north. It wasn’t long before I found a sign to Pirongia National Forest and made a quick left turn to get one last hike in. We arrived in Pirongia town to find the iSite (information center), which was also the hiking information center and the local history museum, closed until 11am; I walked over to the local arts and crafts gallery while Mudito relaxed in the car. When the iSite finally opened up, I got some good info from the guy working there, although I also got roped into a 45 minute lesson about the local history. It was an interesting lesson, and plenty of important things had happened in the area, but I eventually started edging toward the door because I knew the conversation could have lasted all afternoon. Anyway, maybe I’ll go back to Pirongia sometime to talk some more. I made my escape and got back to the car with a hike in mind. We took a while to find the trail head, then started walking up. It was a nice little hike, a bit strenuous because it was uphill the whole time, but nothing too taxing. The mountain happened to be almost smack in the middle of our entire route, so when we got to the top we were able to see from Waitomo clear up to Raglan… couldn’t have asked for a better last step to recap all we had seen. Good 360 views kept us gazing for a while and the empty mountaintop gave us our sacred silence, so we basked and enjoyed ourselves fully. Eventually it was time to move on, so we picked our way back down and got in the car once more. Drove back on the main highway at surrounded by more cars than we had seen the entire time and found ourselves a bit of traffic to get stuck in. Finally we arrived back to the monastery, greeted Lucky and Ajahn and unpacked. The next day was a Day of Peace, where people come to the monastery to mediate all day, so I participated in that to keep the mindful ball rolling. Rested, relaxed, centered, and with a few more adventures under my belt, I was happy to start work up once again and get back into the daily routine.

Lots of love to all ya’ll, thanks for reading yet another epicly long post! (Pics of this and more to come... hopefully soon)