F O UR.

POWER
N O M O R E N E E D F O R O U T WA R D M E C H A N I S M S
T O B E L I B E R AT E D F R O M T H E M
A L E A F FA L L I N G T O T H E G R O U N D

F riends... now that I’ve stepped away from the angst

that accompanied my drive to establish myself, or
more accurately, after the unstable foundation was grounded,
the communication between myself and others has become
so velvety deluxe. There is a place you get to where there is
no more conflict. It occurs naturally through the practice of
meditation. The method is one of repetition — to develop a
resonance, to tune yourself to the flow of energy. The tech-
nique is unimportant. I’ve used several: following the breath,
repeating the Great Dharini, keeping a question. These days I
only keep “What am I?” And there are long moments where
there are no questions, no subject or object, only the rapture
of the state itself.
Like many things that we don’t understand, our approach
is backwards, archaic. You don’t go in trying to still the mind.
That happens by itself, in the presence of the Absolute. It’s get-
ting to that point, which has as much to do with resolving your
own existence, softening, giving in as sitting on the cushion
repeating phrases endlessly.
The world we live in, there is no running through fields of
flowers, at least not without some kind of payment. Outward-
ly the decision has to be made, whether to live anonymously
— a life of freedom, or to go for a position of power, author-
ity. Not only in the field of politics, business, but religion as
well — the world operates under hierarchies. No one escapes
this model. You can refuse to take part in it, but that doesn’t
change anything. There’s always a head. These demarcations
are important, to a degree, but ask a dying man.
The work of Zen is to become liberated and to teach the
path of liberation. It doesn’t follow convention — even though
the institution follows the hierarchal model. This is where the
revolution takes place — between the individual and the estab-
lished order. If there were no hierarchies, where would we be?
It’s hard to even imagine. I see it as a luxury, a convenience.
Everything is organized for you, run by those who believe in
the system. The ladder of success — it’s built in, the climbing.
It doesn’t matter whether the prize is a million dollar home, a
stripe on the sleeve, or a Zen stick, it keeps everyone occupied,
the infrastructure humming. The pattern revealed is a field of
boxes — bland, austere, with some sort of flash designed to
lure the unwary customer. You can tell what drives us. The
ambition is not for beauty or love — but power. What of our
dying man? In a very real sense he is immune to the hegemony
— at least on the surface. Inwardly he may still battle for a
position in heaven. It is the sage who truly becomes free —
free of the noise of civilization while immersed in it, free of
the immense suffering that our ambitions create — but it’s the
freedom of a sword’s edge: hard won, hard to maintain — im-
perceptible. To align oneself to such a task brings a new kind
of power — a personal one.
I’m not going to go into why one would choose such a path.
I assume, if you’re reading this essay, you’ve already found the
normal pursuits unsatisfactory. Unless you were born into a
family with money, unless you find your own power not de-
pendant on outer conditions, you will not have an easy life. As
I say this, I’m walking, late at night — more than a mile — to
get a shower. Ha ha… It’s been a long day. All kinds of things
that were difficult in some way. I don’t struggle with my en-
vironment. I’m able to swing a hammer and keep alive, keep
the projects going, and do long retreats. I don’t know how I
will survive when I get old. I can’t be walking so far… pressing
on. The cool night air, the clatter of dinner plates being put
away — and music, fragments only. A few more steps and I’m
clear of the hulking apartments. The utility lines hang menac-
ingly over a few beat up old vans with blankets over the win-
dows. How many long walks? The scenery can’t be recorded
here. There’s nothing that commands one — though I know
I’ve been here before. Something telling about who they are,
the way they arrange their things — with the least amount of
thought, with no consideration at all for a man of my sort.
There’s an enormous feeling of alienation only possible in
a city of machines. Here a pedestrian is an oddity — or maybe
it’s that I’m acting out of bounds. It’s hard to tell, harder still to
focus on their drone–like behavior. The thing about machines,
they don’t care about you, what you’re doing. You’re free to
walk to your demise.
There’s a feeling of the bottom falling out, pressure; there’s
no place to turn that isn’t filled with images of them. You can’t
avoid picking up snatches of their lives, being stranded some-
where between things — from one box to the next.
The night, blessed night: made of things half done, filled
with sounds that distract you even more — of stumbling on
things unexpectedly, hearing far more than you should; long
moments between things; falling into things set like traps to
snare you. Was I wrong to look into a box that someone left
behind? There are so many of them here.
The Buddha gave his most remarkable teaching at the end
of his life. He said he waited for the end because his students
weren’t ready for it. “All things are contained in the pure and
clear dharmakaya.” Not the meek alone, not the good ones,
or the ones with clean feet — but all of us: every hurricane
survivor, every lost child alone in the world, every crow on the
roadside — all of them friends of mine.
***
I have no luxury of time to exist without a struggle. I’ve
never know a life otherwise. As far as we’ve come, we’ve never
been able to escape this. Some work night and day to domi-
nate, live in fear of being outmaneuvered by the competition
— which, I suppose, gives some amount of satisfaction, pride
— that you’ve climbed over the backs of millions to reach the
summit — like Ozymandias. Have you heard the story?

I met a traveler from an antique land who said, “Two vast

and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert. Near them on
the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown and
wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command tell that its sculptor
well those passions read which yet survive, stamped on these
lifeless things, the hand that mocked them and the heart that
fed. and on the pedestal these words appear: `My name is Ozy-
mandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and
despair!’ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that
colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands
stretch far away.’”
What an example! What a contribution. If you think ahead
a few thousand years, will the crumbling ruins of your legacy
inspire, instruct, give foundation for the enlightened culture
that must surely be the evolution of society? Or will this time
be a blight on the surface, a cancer that has thankfully been re-
moved? There are a lot of ways to look at it. Obviously a long–
term approach is not where we are (as a society). The concept
of free market, like a virus, does not care about the condition
of others — only how they may be exploited — a critical flaw.

“It’s very hard to be in one of these positions (of power) and

 not have a certain amount of almost psychological, maybe
even physiological addiction.”
– Jefferey Pfeffer — Power

Hierarchy — power.. it’s the way of the world. There’s a

boss in every pot, and a yard full of chickens scrambling for it.
It’s given us a lot of remarkably similar box dwellings in inde-
finable city after city.. if we could only change our names to
numbers. We are so lofty in our ideals compared to the com-
munist model, yet the end result is remarkable similar. This
is the pattern of humanity — it can’t be avoided. Everyone’s
yelling from the sidelines, pointing out the corruption that we
must endure — when we’re all so primitive. There’s no real
way to manage us. It’s all fake, a charade. The truth is that we
have no self–existence, and no meaning to our lives, the for-
ward press the function of substance. If you will, look around
you. Everything alive struggles against reason to continue on.
There is no will or command that will stop it — we are com-
pletely powerless against it. Yet we spend our years trampling
back and forth, raising wall after wall… the sidewalk continues
on, the night air full of human concerns.