“Oh What a Goose I Am”

Cat Handcuffs and My Time at the Buddhist Temple

Some might find it strange that someone would be driving up to the Pine Mountain Buddhist Temple in Montecito, CA listening to the old comedy album A Wild & Crazy Guy by Steve Martin (yes it was an ALBUM in those days) when he was still doing stand-up. I hadn’t heard it in years, but I still nearly crashed the car laughing as I listened to his cat handcuffs skit where he has discovered that his cat has been embezzling from him.

The story goes, while he was away his cat would go to the bank disguised as him, including a little arrow through the head, and proceed to take out his money to purchase cat toys. NOW he had $3,000 worth of cat toys and he couldn’t take them back because they had spit all over them. Thus the need for cat handcuffs, just the front paws would be fine – or the four paws would work as well. For some reason this always gave me the funniest picture in my head. And I guess at that moment I needed to just remind myself not to take things so seriously – and to be happy that aside from all of us having green eyes, that my cats look nothing like me.

It was in this mindframe that I headed to points north of L.A. for enlightenment or just the chance to learn about this whole meditation thing I had heard about.

Every time I get on the open road for a trip, or the clogged roads surrounding L.A. as was the case, I always have prime time to think. I was preoccupied with thoughts about what this was going to be like. My mother’s cult thoughts ran through my head. Was I really just going to an outpost of ex-60s flower children who were worshipping a stick and looking for the pin number to my bank account?

Additionally, thoughts like, Would the monks speak to me? Am I allowed to speak to them? Would other people talk to me? Could Jen “Ants-in-her-Pants” Kamienski actually sit still and just think for a period of time without reading a book while music was playing and the TV was on? Is vegetarian code for eating bushes, bark and twigs? Would the Presidential campaign go on without me? For four hours, these thoughts ran through my head.

My brother, being the supportive soul that he is, did a wonderful job of putting a mantra in my head before I went. He said, “Whenever you start to chant a mantra think, “ohwhatagooseIam.” Yes – Oh What A Goose I Am. Which turns out is an old line from The Odd Couple (Episode: The Exorcists, Season: 4 – for any geeks). So, just like when he pointed out that the sign at the local organic grocery store named “Cream of the Crop” looked like “Cream Crap” and I can’t see it in any other way now, my first attempts at chanting were clouded with a desperate need to giggle. Not really a good thing to do in the meditation room. So I choked down my chortles as I had done in the Duomo in Amalfi when the priest at my friend’s wedding had a horrible stutter anytime he said the “k” sound. How do you go through a Catholic service and not stutter through 100 “kkk-christs!” I thought I was going to give myself a hernia that day or at least a bladder infection.

I digress. Thankfully with Zen Serenity Meditation there was little chanting and I settled into several hours of meditation over the weekend. Really, how often do you spend 4 hours staring at a wall to gain enlightenment... or a backache and blurred vision (as was frequently the case). But here’s the thing – it does work. The best way I can describe the feeling of what it does is to reboot the brain.

When you meditate in this style you keep your eyes open and you are supposed to just sit there. Don’t think. Don’t let your mind wander. Just actively look at the wall. See but don’t notice the nail heads coming through the wall or the fact that the reflections from the candles are making you kinda dizzy. Just sit. When your mind starts to wander you have to pull yourself back and just look at the wall.

It reminded me of a movie, like usual, called Shirley Valentine about a woman who’s not happy with her life and has an uncommunicative husband, so she decides to start talking to the wall in her kitchen. “Hello, Wall!” she’d say every time she was preparing the evening meal. Whenever I sat down for the next round of meditation I would address my wall, Hello Wall. This actually helped me focus back on the wall when my mind wandered.

I believe you stare at a wall so that you are less enticed to be distracted from your purpose and this really does help. For one session we faced inside the room and there was way too much to look at. I missed my wall.

As for the temple itself, the monks who run the temple are extraordinarily gentle souls but human ones at the same time. They do talk – actually they lend a good ear if you need it. And they give real life feedback. They have worries, anger, complaints, in other words human feelings, just like the rest of us. They are just better at choosing the response they have to any given situation. I would assume rather than being angry when someone cuts them off in traffic they would compassionately hope the person isn’t hurt by how fast they are driving. This is a different perspective. One that gives you less indigestion and chest pains, and one I hope to gain.

The time itself was not about lazing around and contemplating nature. This is a highly scheduled regiment, at least on the weekend of the retreats – I’m told it’s less so on regular weekends. We were up by 6:00. In meditation by 6:30 until 7:30. Cleaned up the various houses until 8:30 when breakfast started. 9:30 we went back to cleaning the grounds. It is a very clean environment, even with the finest dust from the surrounding mountains. Everyone contributes. It’s your offering. And it does feel good to just concentrate on sweeping the deck or patio. It’s another kind of meditation. You are focusing only on that activity. Not on work. Not on your love life. Not on your dwindling finances that are too closely matching the current Dow average. It’s just you, the broom and the hummingbirds. As I said, calming.

There is a mid-afternoon meditation, followed by rest periods and group meals, all very good vegetarian means from Rev. Leon, and you are on schedule right up until the last meditation session ending at 9:00 p.m. Lights out is at 9:45 and I don’t think I made it that long once.

As I mentioned this particular weekend was a retreat. The Segaki Retreat is basically the Buddhist version of Halloween. Rather than the All Hallows Eve that we all know where you put on masks and carve up Jack-O-Lanterns to scare away ghouls, the Buddhist celebration actually takes the ghosts and lost souls and makes an offering to help them from where they are stuck onto the next plane. The Gaki’s are represented as figures who have large heads and scrawny bodies with tiny necks who are unable to swallow love. Thus the phrase when you find things hard to swallow. The treats that are given during the Segaki ceremony are to entice them to accept the love and move on in their journey. The ceremony itself is followed by a celebration where the offerings are consumed by the participants – I’m still recovering from the sugar coma. But you can see the similarities - aside from the masks - it really is like Halloween, including the cool candy part, the end result is just intended to be nicer for the ghosts.

The Temple is 25 miles from the main highway and there are only a couple of houses in the surrounding area. It’s warm during the day with bright blue skies and cold at night with thousands of stars, but lest you think that they are totally removed from the world, they are not. I felt a million miles from the endless coverage of the Presidential elections that had taken over my free time with unending updates from the trail. But I wanted that. I needed an intervention.

The monks themselves were informed and even registered to vote. The voter registration might have been an hour away but they did it. It would make me angry with the lazy people who don’t even register eventhough they have passed the registration table at the local Trader Joe’s for months. However, after this weekend of beginning enlightenment and heightened compassion, I can only hope that one day they will awaken to the opportunity they are missing.