I'm zuuuurück!
Last night I had in the East / West Books in Mountain View, California, my first book signing for my book Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to polyamory and Everything in Between (you get your copy now).
tomorrow night (Sept. 17) by 19 clock I'll be with Copperfield's Books in Petaluma, California.
On 20 Clock by 19 September I will be with Diesel Books in Oakland.
I am also on Sunday morning (19 Sep.). Be at 9 clock around Christmas tree at Henry's Show at San Francisco's KRON Channel 4.
Then I fly back to Milwaukee, where my car is parked, and drive to Akron, Ohio in order to rehearse for the Zero Defex appearance on a show called The Debacle on Saturday, 25 September in Kent Stage in Kent, Ohio. The show starts at 20 clock. We're really tuned late, around midnight.
After that I will on Wednesday, 29 September at 19 clock in Cleveland Buddhist Temple give a lecture.
Then it's on to New York for a book signing on 15 October by 19 clock .
follows the one Zen Retreat Weekend on 16 and 17 October .
In November, I will participate in a doge Translator Forum, which is in the San Francisco Zen Center, 5 to 7 is held.
I will also give some performances in Montreal in October or November is known, when the excitement has since set up. And a few more things to do in and around Los Angeles in November.
this whole crazy mess of activities is just where I just returned from a one-month stay at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Monastery in the middle of the Ventana Wilderness Area near Caramel Valley, California return.
As can be seen in the photo above, I got myself there, miss a haircut. I've been involved for over 20 years in punk rock and this is my first Iro [kesenschnitt]. Somehow I've lost 10 pounds even though my diet consisted only of a seemingly constant supply of the world's best breads and cakes. Tassajara is famous for its baked goods. And rightly so.
Originally, I was invited to Tassajara to the students to keep there in their last week of every summer season a few guest lectures. Tassajara is mainly a Zen monastery. But originally it was a health spa and for about three months each summer, it opened to paying guests. There are no paid employees as such. All the guests and the like matters are handled by the Zen students. These students follow the morning and evening regulated Zen schedule and spend the rest of the day with the tasks necessary to keep the resort going. This includes room cleaning, bed making, cooking, dining work the swimming pool and bath house is kept going, the dishes and so on.
When I received the invitation, I looked at my schedule and found that I had space for about a month. So I asked my friend Greg Fain, the Tanto [practice manager] in Tassajara, if I do not come easy for the whole month and there might be students. He inquired and found that there were still room and so the deal was made clear. I had no idea what I took in there. But it felt as if I could use that.
Do you know people before I went to Tassajara three or four months I traveled around the world. I enjoyed the attention of all Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Crazy fans tore his ass up at me in Helsinki, Belfast, Warsaw, Toulouse, Berlin, Amsterdam, Tel Aviv, Shizuoka, and to see elsewhere. People I spoke in Austin, Texas and Tokyo meant to Japan in the street to tell me how much you my books. When I paid in Knoxville, Tennessee with the credit card used book seller said the "I thought that I know you!". I have a suspicion that if I get stared at a restaurant or other public places, it is not so because I made a booger the nose is, but because it could really be that someone recognizes me does not dare come here and just "Hi" to say (the way my account is fine as long as people do so respectfully).
It's strange.
also took the life I lived myself further and further away from my Zen practice. It is difficult to sit twice a day if you fly continuously faster than a rifle bullet from place to place, to meet people, hanging out, seeing the sights, you can serve and what not.
Why all this happened and I'm still scheißarm?
But I digress. I felt like I needed the strict sequence, the ridiculous rules and the hard work. Tassajara requires its students to get back on the right track. We will see whether it has brought what not.
I was assigned to the dining room, where I spent most of such a thing as a waiter. There is no menu in Tassajara. The meals are the same for everyone. There were no orders to take and, unfortunately, no tip. But I gave coffee out and opened wine bottles (with the motto "bring your own bottle," Alcohol is neither sold or served), plates went on the trolley through the neighborhood, made coffee, scratched organic waste in buckets, and made general do what waiter. That was on days when I was not classified as a dishwasher.
I must admit the first few days at work I thought "these people do not know who I am? I am one of the most important voices of contemporary Buddhism! Fill up your coffee? HA! You should be lucky to get filled up your coffee from a star of my caliber! ".
I exaggerate, but not much. And there were a few guests who recognized me. But by and large, are the guests of the Tassajara not my target audience. I was recognized most frequently by students. But that was OK because it does not take long until one of the Beeindrucktsein of time comes when you see the guy as he drags smelly compost bucket and scrape the dried muck from the samovar [tea].
Like Greg said when I told him just a few lines here to read: "It is a great opportunity to study the self." It certainly was. There is a Perspective, maybe even said "too much perspective" [too much perspective] as Spinal Tap. But it was really good:
I also had a few adventures. Like when I went with three others to a supposed three-hour hike. We eventually lost the orientation in the woods and had to spend the night at a campsite we had found, completely by surprise. I had a T-shirt and jeans. It's out there in the mountains at night down to just above 0 degrees. No sleeping bag, no jacket. I had wrapped a towel around his shoulders to a little cold to hold. Oh and we are still the most of the way ran into a creek and were soaking wet.
some incredible people I've met. Have a punk rock band founded. I relearned things I had forgotten. Have a ceremony for the welfare of Nina Hartley's mother carried out. Have almost every day put on my robes. I can cut my first Iro. Learned a few new jokes (What has two knees and swims in the ocean -? A two-knee fish) * It is definitely worth it and I would do it again at any time, if I can cope with the staff.
I will be more to my overall impressions Leave from there in the coming weeks.
See you at the signings!
* pun on "tuna fish (tuna)
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