Hello everyone ---------------------------------------- > Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 18:27:04 -0800 > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [MD] The Quality/MOQ dichotomy > >[snip] > I would rather be listening to good music or playing basketball, than running > from a bear or being on a ski slope where I don't belong.
Dan: When we're young we're repeatedly cautioned not to do this and not to do that. Most people are content to live in an envelope of safety prescribed by the authorities in our life. We grow to rely on guides to show us the right way to go so we stay out of harm's way. But a few are not content... "Mountains like these and travelers in the mountains and events that happen to them here are found not only in Zen literature but in the tales of every major religion. The allegory of a physical mountain for the spiritual one that stands between each soul and its goal is an easy and natural one to make. Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships. Some travel into the mountains accompanied by experienced guides who know the best and least dangerous routes by which they arrive at their destination. Still others, inexperienced and untrusting, attempt to make their own routes. Few of these are successful, but occasionally some, by sheer will and luck and grace, do make it. Once there they become more aware than any of the others that there's no single or fixed number of routes. There are as many routes as there are individual souls." [ZMM] I became a traveler in the mountains many years ago when I found myself all alone, deep in the Gila National Forest in southern New Mexico, surrounded by darkness and danger. I'd driven through the mountains many times; I'd even stayed a week at a cabin in the Rockies. But I'd never been in the mountains, not really. I married, started a business, raised a family, and surrounded myself with the usual accoutrements one acquires living the good life of Western culture. One day -- I don't remember exactly when -- it all began falling apart. And like a snowball growing bigger and bigger as it rolls downhill, it fell apart in a hurry. Eventually, after a many months struggle against the current, I figured I needed a change. I packed up a few items I thought I might need, jumped in my pickup truck, and pointed it west. I found a secluded spot by asking some of the locals who inhabited a wide spot in the road just outside of Hillsboro, New Mexico. Running out of the dirt road the locals pointed out, I secreted my pickup truck in a gulch and walked a good six hours into the mountains that first day, trudging up and down several different winding paths (that's a story in itself). I didn't realize how early it grew dark there in the mountains. Before I knew it, shadows were creeping and I had to find a place to sleep before it grew too dark to see. I picked what looked like a good place just below some rather high and craggy granite cliffs, a spectacularly beautiful spot situated close to a boulder-strewn creek. I could put my ear to the rocks and hear the water trickling underneath. I wasn't sure if the water'd be good to drink but I brought along purification tabs, just in case. To my uneducated eye, it was a perfect spot to spend the night. As I said, though I'd been to the mountains I'd never been in the mountains before; I'd never before been so completely and utterly alone so far away from anybody and everybody. I stumbled around in the rapidly darkening trees hurriedly gathering wood for a fire all the while taking care where I stepped so as not to twist an ankle. Once I'd gathered what I judged to be enough wood for the night, I discovered the ground was too hard to pitch my tent. I rolled out my sleeping bag under the gathering stars. A cold wind blew down from higher up; I fumbled together a fire as quickly as I could. The tiny flickers of flame felt good so I sat close and watched the darkness grow. As I sat there feeding sticks into the fire I marveled at the quiet bearing down all around. I could hear my own heart beating over the crackle of fire. Sparks rose up into a black sky dotted with light from a million stars hundreds and thousands of billions of miles away. I ate some instant soup and soon discovered how tired I was. My mind full with these new experiences, I slipped off to sleep. Deep in the night I jolted awake. Something was coming through the trees, and whatever it was, it sounded big... very big. The terrific crashing and thrashing sound came closer and closer to where I lay. I sat up and stared into the darkness but my fire had by now gone out; I'd failed to gather enough wood to last the night; it was pitch black, the kind of inky darkness I never before experienced. I had a flashlight with me but the thought came to me that (maybe) whatever it was in those woods might not see me if I stayed still and didn't betray my position by shining a light on it. So I laid back down. The crashing sound stopped as suddenly as it started. Laying there in the darkness my mind began conjuring what it was that could make a noise like that. A bear. It had to be a bear. A big bear. There was nothing else I could think of that would make that kind of noise. As I lay there in the darkness, I thought I heard something snuffling around. I was (by now) absolutely convinced it was a bear. My skin grew clammy with nervousness, my sleeping bag wet with perspiration, but I was too scared to move. So I just laid there, shivering. I'd been told before I left for the mountains to watch out for "critters." My brother advised me to go to Florida instead. My sister told me it was dangerous, not to go. She said that she read that there were mountain lions, cougars, and bears in the region I planned on going. I didn't pay attention to them though. I was bound and determined to go to the mountains. Now, I regretted not listening. I'd been conditioned my whole life to think the worst, that there was something out there that thought I was important enough and tasty enough to eat. And here it was! Of course I didn't realize it it was my conditioning playing tricks on me at the time. I just lay there cursing myself for coming here in the first place, for not even bringing a gun to protect myself. I didn't even own a gun, but I could have bought one. What if the bear smelled me? I wondered what that first bite would feel like... My eyes opened just as the sky was turning early pink. I had fallen asleep despite my fear. I got up, stretched the sleep out of my bones, hung my sleeping bag up to dry, and started looking to see what kind of tracks might be around from the night before. There were no tracks. Instead I found a long path of broken trees. And some rather large boulders that had broken off the cliff high overhead and rolled down close to where I camped, breaking trees and shrubs as they went. By sheer dumb luck I had put my sleeping bag on a high spot so the rocks didn't quite reach me. One boulder was as large as a small house, so large that had it rolled on top of me, I would have been completely buried. No one would have found me until the world itself was unmade. I would have just laid there, deep in those mountains, buried under several tons of rock. I would have become the rock. Some might call it God's grace that I survived to tell the story while others might call it luck born of utter and complete ignorance. Perhaps it was a little of both, I don't know. But I do know if I played it safe I never would have discovered the wonders of those magnificent mountains. I've returned there many times since. There'll perhaps come a time when my luck runs out but that's true for all of us, isn't it. I find my travels in the mountains mirrors my travels in philosophy. Many people begin their journey by attending universities and reading all they can read. They seek guidance in their quest. They come to regard philosophy through the eyes of others. It is a rare philosopher who advances an original idea because most everyone relies on others to show them the way. I stumbled into philosophy the way I stumbled into the mountains. Most philosophy books put me to sleep; they sit on my bookshelves unread, taunting me. I don't know Plato from Pluto. I married young, right out of high school. I went to work, not to college. I spent my days building a business and learning to deal with others by working belly to belly with them. All my expertise came through a university all right, the university of hard knocks. When I was asked to try and put the old Lila Squad into some kind of order, I had no way of knowing how to go about it. Several well-meaning people offered their help; in the end, they seemed as clueless as I was, at least to my inexperienced eye. So I just did what I thought was right. By God's grace or just plain dumb luck, the work was completed. It had nothing to do with me; rather, it had to do with all of you here, and some who are no longer here, so many individually different paths all leading right here to this moment. Pretty fucking cool when you think about it. Some of us believe in God, some don't. Some here are artists, some are scientists, some are anarchists twisting their arguments against everyone just for the kick they get out of it. Some are true to themselves while others hide behind multiple personalities invented to shield against reality. It's all Good though... Thanks for the opportunity to expound, Dan _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail® is up to 70% faster. 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