Facing The Wall

The Summer of Love in 1967 lasted about ten hours. It was an extraordinary event in history, quite unlike any before or since. Now it is such ancient history that it has a ring like 'The Roaring Twenties,' World War One,' or 'The Edwardian Age.' It's hard to make out what really happened then. Very few films or writing outside of archival materials seem to capture those events beginning and ending in Golden Gate Park so long ago.

It was more than a 'hippy thing', more than sensuality, drugs and sex. It was also an avatar happening that held dear human rights, individual and sexual freedom, collective well-being, joy, expressive abandonment,art, music, civil rights, economic and social justice, racial harmony, intense spirituality and so much more. It was the collective punch in the eye and rejection of Puritan America by a generation. Was it the beginning of The Age of Aquarius or its end? Not since the great labor riots of an earlier age had so many defied civil authority or so many since the Great Depression been on the move across the land.

The 'Summer of Love' was like some divine wild flower that rose to affirm the best in us and then faded just as quickly. Those of my generation that were there that day or build lives for a short while around its almost Arthurian legend saw within weeks: violence, illness, rot, decay, hard street drugs and an end of its promise.

The greater reflex of desiccation, greed, power, war and the enormous force of America's hidden police state came to bare down on deviance, dissent, political opposition and cultural experimentation. It was a lot like today, but without the level of consciousness. The neighborhood Officer Goodey turned into a monster with sadism, clubs and mace. The brief rise of the old pagan gods and godesses were swiftly dealt another blow by the righteous fist of a Christian nation, whose old power masters had seen their private secrets become public parties open to all without fear.

Most of those tens of thousands who saw briefly a new light eventually folded back within the system to achieve significant advances within the mainstream culture. Still more just folded in and utlimately adopted the old, tried and true ways, of self advancement, family making, traditional responsibilities and in the words of a few, 'co-optive failure'.

Some, like this author, nearing 60, still wonder what to be when finally grown up. Age and a smidgen of wisdom tell us it just ain't in the destiny. A portfolio of humane causes, hospice work, community action, civil rights, political activism, and the arts of painting and sculpture do not supplement Social Security, but do 'pass it forward'--the best of it anyway , as cause and effect or good karma. And, frankly speaking in a world as vicious as ours that seems like accomplishment enough.

Others saw those events as a spiritual path, a great opportunity for change and betterment of our common lot. By the time the sun had set on Golden Gate Park it was already clear to these last ones that it wasn't going to be easy. There were dozens of paths leading out of the Park that day. The most productive, however, could hear Alan Ginsberg's OHM from miles away and it was a honing signal to begin a new way.

Some of us ended up in a hippy commune in San Jose, because in those days you could rent a whole house for $200.00 or so. For me it was a pact with friends and close to SJ State University where the famous Professor McCullough taught Indian Philosophy. For every student who took his course there were two who just 'sat in.'

McCullough was an extraordinary teacher. White haired, ironic with a brilliance for illustration he enthralled several generations under his wise guide. The single memory of him is standing in front of a class of several hundred kids and a handfull of older adults lecturing on the 'fundamental ground of duality.' He would stand in front of the lecturn and hold out one arm palm up. Then he would make a fist and say, "hand or fist?" Then we were off on the nature of duality and the expressive manifestations of the Hindu pantheon. It was like soul candy. We love it and him. Years later, hitch hiking through India I experienced the practical manifestation of his illustration: Palm up meant, 'baksheesh' and fist meant ' fuck you' when 'baksheesh' was denied.

It was in that class that I met a buddy, who practiced a Buddhist form of meditation called zazen. I was somewhat familiar with Zen, because Daitsetsu Sazuki, a brilliant Rinzai master, had published much in English on the subject to the captivated delight of Western readers. Also, I had the karmic luck of meeting Roshi Phillip Kapleau, a western born Zen priest, who had published a basic instruction book, titled "The Three Pillars of Zen."

With OHM in my ears and Zen in my mind I met Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Years later Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and the San Francisco Zen Center became world famous. The Center has now put out several generations of Zen Buddhists and has amassed a substantial presence in America with publications, retreat centers, vegan farms, restaurants and a variety of other businesses.

But, when I studied under Suzuki all that glory had yet to arrive. We met in a garage created as a Hondo, meditation hall, by a wonderful woman named Marion Derby (sic), who had turned over part of her handsome surburban house to the practice of zen and those wanting to learn the Dharma from Suzuki Roshi. The months of lectures which Suzuki gave in that garage eventually were published as, "Beginner's Mind," one of the best of its kind in English on the subject of Zen.

Zen has a long history, dating back in practice to 10th century T'ang China. Five main schools survived out of that tradition and eventually two were made to revive in Sung China (12th cen) and then were carried to Japan. The Rinzai tradition of which Kapleau and Daisetsu Suzuki were representative uses a system of koans or 'riddles'(for want of a better word) to facilitate meditation practice.

The great center of Rinzai Zen was the ancient capital of Kyoto and the complex known as Daitokuji. Daitokuji is a magical place with narrow streets, alleys, and high clay walls connecting a myriad of temples and gardens that date back hundreds of years. Peaceful, quiet, broken by the chimes of temple bells and wafting inscense distinguish it as a haven in the bustle of modern Kyoto, which now surrounds it. Made of mud walls, clay tiles, wood and ancient rock/gravel gardens its survival is a testment to the reverance with which Buddhists hold sacred places even during the turbulance of civil wars.

When Rinzai Zen first came to America it settled in the Los Angeles area and eventually spread throughout the country. The Zen practice of Shunryu Suzuki and that of his San Francisco Zen Center is not Rinzai. It is called Sotoshu and its main discipline is a form of zen called 'shikantaza' or empty meditation established by its founder, Dogen, in Japan. It has also been called 'facing the wall' unlike Rinzai Zen whose practitioners face the center of the meditation room.

Both schools of Zen remain vital and dynamic confirmation of the profound appeal of Buddhist metaphysics that have taken root in the West. Rinzai, whose center was in Kyoto and Kamakura was taken up by the ruling warrior/military class in Japan and found expression in virtually every form of disciplined endeavor. Japanese martial arts, calligraphy, poetry (Haiku), painting, tea ceremony, archery and many other highly skilled practices owe their continuing contribution to culture as a result of Rinzai Zen.

Soto Zen, however, did not establish itself in metropolitian areas and instead went to far, distant, remote mountains like its Chinese cousin and established its headquarters and monastery, Eiheiji, near Fukui Japan. Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen in Japan, had brought back the teachings from Sung China as a noble, Buddhist courtier.

It was a welcome alternative to the elaborate, tantric Buddhism then practiced by the Japanese court of the time. Dogen's writing remains some of the most beautiful in the Japanese/Chinese language. It is to Japanese language, spiritual, literature what Blaise Pasqal's Christian writings are to French. Dogen's master work is the 'Shobogenso' which has been translated into English and remains an exquisite read to this day.

Shortly after the garage zendo experience Suzuki's principle disciples bought a Zen Center building in San Francisco and began its dynamic growth under the talented guidence of Richard Baker, Suzuki's heir successor. I wanted to study Zen in Japan under monastic conditions. So many of the Center's adherents had that holy smile, and 'found it' attitude I found unbearably irritating. I knew that I wouldn't last long there. In hind sight I realize mine was a snotty, judgemental call. But, the good news was that my ignorance led to a greater opportunity to challenge it.

Most of them in retrospect probably went on to successful religious careers while mine--well, languished. Suzuki, who was exceptionally adroit at seeing both talent and limitations in his students proposed not to send me to Eiheiji, where I probably would have lasted a day or two, but to a tiny unkown training monastery in the mountains surrounding Kyoto.

Also, about this time major demonstrations were happening on University campus's around the Bay. U.C. Berkeley was one of the largest and students from everywhere came to inhale tear gas and be beaten to pulps for exercising free speech and the right of assembly. Then, as now, military style police created riots and then inflicted extreme measures to enhance their control and power.

Some of the bad karma from that period comes to me every time I see a cop and want to throw a rock. In spite of the enlightened teachers in my past, the hard case remains and the journey toward compassion seems extremely difficult--particularly now that fascism is finally deep rooted in America and all the values fought for over a lifetime seem as fragile as the Summer of Love.

I moved back into San Francisco about this time with a group of friends who had been held captive in the Santa Rita Detention Center (a holding pen for political dissidents). Hundreds were held there after being arrested during the Berkeley demonstrations. It was not so much punishment as a highly successful resource for political forumns, seminars on non-violent resistance, and consumate networking. A Joan Baez here, a Tom Hayden there, created a oneness of direction--briefly.

Part of the group I joined created The San Francisco Liberation Commune in a black neighborhood on the Potrero in San Francisco. The title sounds like some great socialist utopia, but in reality it was a bunch of college, white kid, hippies recovering from their first confrontation with the brutality of real establishment power. True, there was a trust fund Maoist or two, but mostly it was acid, grass, studies, the Winterland, and demonstrations.

The commune was also an underground railroad for AWOL defectors on the way to Canada. When one of the special forces marines we sheltered was picked up after his step mother ratted on him and given a lobotomy everyone freaked out as they say. The stories out of Viet Nam were hell on earth. But, now after all these years most of that has come out. Back then no one believed us until Mei Lai. 'Apocalypse Now' (1979), which came out tweleve years later was more truth than fiction.

For some of us it was always about spiritual direction combined with political activism. My involvement with Suzuki began to take me far-a-field from my peers, but they supported that and wished me well. Never was the decision to choose a spiritual path over a political/social one made more clearer than when several weeks before leaving for Japan I attended a secret meeting in a house off the Golden Gate Panhandle hosted by a group that called themselves the Weathermen.

After Berkeley, the Weathermen advocated violent revolution, similar to Black Panther rhetorical posturing. They soon committed some nasty crimes and became a favorite paranoid matrix of the F.B.I. That day the group was plotting demonstrations for the upcoming Democratic Convention in Chicago. We all know how that turned out. Come to think of it Bodhisattva Ginsberg was chanting OHM there too.

Suzuki sent me to Kyoto to a tiny mountain monastary called Antaiji, nestled in the hills above Daitokuji in an area called Takagamine (Hawk Hills). The day before I left for Japan the commune gave me a copy of the I-ching and a birthday party. I was to turn 21 my second day in Japan. Soon after I left, Martin Luther King was assassinated and angry black folks in the neighborhood fire bombed the place and it burned to the ground.

I arrived at Haneda airport in the late afternoon of Spring 1967 and wondered how the hell I was to get to Kyoto from Tokyo. Finally I got a taxi driver, who patiently explained to me that Kyoto was a long ways away and that I had better take a train in the morning. He knew a cousin who ran a small hotel in Yokohama where I could say. On the ride there he pried the story about Antaiji out of me and kept shaking his head in cynical wonder.

When he checked me in he told me to lock my door and under no circumstances open it until he arrived the next day. Sato San had taken me to a brothel run by a cousin who catered to Americans stationed at a base nearby. And, true there were some noisy goings on that night in the hallways. The next day Sato San told me that he was going to take a few days off and see me directly and safely to the front door of Antaiji. And, he did.

I arrived the afternoon of my 21st birthday as a weeklong sesshin (a week long meditation session) began. If I could stay the course I could stay.
I remember so clearly even after all these long years walking down that long, well swept dirt road surrounded on both sides by a thick forest of green bamboo and passing through the high, clay wall at the end into a new life facing the wall. But, that and meeting Uchiyama Kosho is another story.