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!