Saga Dawa Duchen

I have been told that: “Buddhists are religious atheists” many times, but have yet to divine a good primary source for the saying. Most of the people who have said it to me were evangelical Christians so they meant it as a terrible insult. It is always important to know one's audience when delivering insults or punchlines.

A smiling TV corespondent with perfect hair decides to crack a little joke for the Dali Lama.
“OK, so, A guy walks into a Pizza parlor and says 'Can you make me one with everything'.” he says
“We can help you with that” Says DL.
“You get it...right?” asks the TV person.
“What is 'Pizza'?” asks DL.

Today's full moon marks the anniversary of Buddha Shakyamuni’s enlightenment at the age of 35 in Bodhgaya, India. It is a great day to go out, enjoy the summer's first real full moon, and circumambulate a stupa.

I will not be out circumambulating much of anything as I was savagely attacked by a dog last night, and have four deep puncture wounds in my left calf. The attack occurred over 18 hours ago, and the wounds no longer bleed whenever I stand up.

There are so many things I like about Buddhism that I find it easy to both ignore and focus on the things I dislike about it. I can ignore the unsavory elements because they are outweighed by so much non-theistic (should I say trans-theistic) practice. I can focus on them because they form a small enough definable subset that I can wrap my mind around them.

One of the things I can't swallow is the whole reincarnation thing. Though this concept is quite central to Buddhist philosophy it is rather ancillary to the details of much Buddhist practice. By this I mean that many practices can survive the substitution of more rational motivations for that of reincarnation, and retain significantly purposeful attributes.

I'm sure it can feel comforting to believe that a long-time-pet might “come back” as a human. Some folks even take their pets on long walks around stupas hoping that their clockwise “walkies” will translate to much needed pet-karma. I'm also sure there is some sort of severe karmactic penalty for not cleaning up after your pet on such walks.

When I had our feline-pet of several years put down a couple of springtimes ago I felt guilty. Perhaps if I had banked up a bunch of walking karma for our cat I would have felt better. However, our cat was never one for being taken for a walk, especially on a leash.

He was a particularly large black long-haired cat; we named him “Merlin”. He was a stray. We live at the edge of town, and every couple of days someone deposits a no-longer-cute former kitten near our house; the coyotes love this practice.

A couple of years into Merlin's residency with us he developed a condition called “mega-colon” which is a usually fatal progressively-severe blockage of the large intestine. It is probably due to a paralytic infection caused perhaps by a species of neurotoxic Clostriduium. Though it has been suggested that it could be Mycobacterial.

For several years Merlin suffered through monthly, then weekly, then (for the last few weeks) daily enemas.  I had never before considered the posibility of cat enemas, and would have told you they were imposible to perform on an unanesthetized cat if I had.  Finally he was reduced to being unable to walk more than a few steps before doubling over in pain.  Then he would announce his discomfort with a mournful wail that only a dying cat could muster.

AOD and I took Merlin to the vet. I think it is best to hire someone to put down one's pets. I think it is just a bit more civilized to not kill one's pet with the same hands that nurtured, stroked, and fed it.

I was worried about how the putting down would go down. We only had one other pet die in our household. It was a Chameleon named “Bob” that was little more than a energetic houseplant, and only survived a few weeks before kicking the bucket. Bob's funeral was a splendid affair. AOD said a beautiful eeulogy for Bob.  Everyone's eyes watered up.

We called the vet, and set up an appointment. Though we were not a minute too early they ended up not being ready for us, and so we waited with Merlin in the pickup for 45 minutes. He was more animated than he had been in weeks. He tried climbing from AOD's lap to mine. He pushed his head under our hands insisting into each stroke by arching his neck. When his damaged intestine caught up with his movements he would try to slip to the floor of the truck. He was strangely silent except for the now weakly purring motor that sputtered with pain.

“I think he is getting better” said AOD through hopeful tears.

He was limp from exertion when the vet was finally ready for us. I carried his unprotesting body into the examination room. He was calmly purring under my stoking as the vet explained that he would be injecting him with a lethal dose of tranquilizer.

Tears freely flowed from AOD's eyes. She was silent except when an inhale would catch unexpectedly on something invisible.

I think I remember Merlin responding to the hypodermic needle as it was inserted into his paw. The response was very small. Like his involuntarily flinch after I caught his ear wrong while scratching his head.

AOD said nothing till long after we got home.

Behind our house there are a couple of gamble oaks that have Tibetan prayer flags draped between them. Millennia from now someone will uncover a parcel of bones wrapped in non-biodegradable polyester blankets, and surrounded by a assortment of small seemingly random items.

Farther up the hill behind our house (several hundred feet of elevation gain farther up the hill) is a spot with a beautiful view. From high on the hill I can sometimes catch a glimpse of a fluttering red or blue or yellow flag. In the winter green seems easiest to spot. I bicycle up to it often. It is a strenuous climb. Yesterday AOD bicycled up to it for the first time with me.

Tooele Panorama

The mad rush downhill from the overlook is slowed by only a couple of dips. The trail becomes a paved road for a few blocks and dips through a small development with six custom homes. Then it veers off pavement for another almost mile of gravity fueled thrill before popping out a half-block from my house. My enormous gravitational advantage over AOD gave me a fifty-foot lead when the dog came out onto the road.

It was an old fat dog. I instantly knew I could outrun it, but if I did it would be on track to intercept AOD. The typical bike-dog interaction is one where the dog comes bounding off the porch and barks till you have passed out of it's territory Then it goes back to the porch confident that it has won. This dog was not barking.

I slowed down a little hoping that AOD would pass while the dog was interested in me. AOD slowed down also.

I think the dog was a little surprised to so easily catch me. It may have wondered for a second what to do. In my mind's replay I imagine tazing the dog at this moment,and avoiding what came next.

The dog latched onto my calf, and then began violently shaking its head trying to dislodge a mouthful of AOA meat. I dismounted (perhaps fell is a better description) jamming my hip, arm, and scratching the shiny new look of my not-month-old hardtail 29er mountain bike. I positioned the bike between the dog and myself, brandished it as a weapon, and began yelling in French. People miles away looked around in horror to see who was yelling at them.

The dog was confused by my transformation from lunch wagon to aggressive, armed, and very loud stranger. It was effectively channeling its inner Cujo, but I responded to it's bare-toothed lunges with deftly-wielded aluminum bike-frame.  It cowered, and I pressed my advantage.

I was not going to allow the dog to focus it's attention on the now horrified AOD.  A bike-frame is an awkward weapon.  I tried to identify cobble-sized rocks which could be used to severely wound the animal.

The irony of planning the violent putting down of someones aged pet in front of the same young woman who witnessed me facilitating the caring and protracted putting down of Merlin was lost on me till some hours later.

I was still yelling at the top of my voice when we saw a woman in a red shirt come out of one of the larger (probably 8,000 sq ft) houses and call to the dog. The dog wisely thought going to it's master was the best choice, and took off running.

I tried to sit down, but ended up on my side. Blood was pouring out of my leg at a rate that would have given me at least a half hour before passing out. I yelled to the woman's back for help. She disapeard. I continued yelling as I removed my jersey and applied pressure to the wound. For some reason I distinctly remember the sensation of my sock being wet; the wounds did not hurt.

AOD was shocked, but scared. I asked her to go to our house so that I could be taken to the hospital in the truck. I was drenched in sweat from overheating my way up the mountain, but I was cold now, and shivering. AOD began biking back up the mountain to a cutoff trail that was a shortcut for home. It was a technically steep trail, and I began picturing her also going to th hospital for injuries incurred during her mad dash home. I called her back. She bicycled back to me, dropped her bike and began running for home. She was running in the wrong direction. I called her back again. She was shaking too.

It looked like the pressure was stopping the free-flow bleeding. I continued to yell for help, but none came. I did not trust the idea of sending AOD up to these unconscionably uncivil people's doors to knock for help. I tied the jersey around my calf, and l limped home using my bike as a crutch.

By the time we got to the urgent care facility the swelling was pronounced. The wounds were also making up for their tardy messaging of my pain receptors.  Like all good point swelling we compared its extent to sports equipment.

“Ping-pong balls”

“No, they are all fused together into half a baseball.”

All dog-bites that require hospital intervention result in a mandatory police report. After we had picked up my antibiotics, and a question of jurisdiction had been resolved (The location of the attack was just outside the city limits) I was visited by the sheriff.

Ever noticed how an injury and hospital visit makes you smell weird? Since that was coupled with the sweat of the pre-attack hill-climb I was ripe. The doctor told me to avoid getting the wound wet for a while so I smell worse right now.

Still the young tattoo-ed sheriff took my statement, and went up to deliver a citation to the dog owners. It was around midnight.

Shortly after he left I got a call.

“You sure this is the right house. They say they don't have a dog.”

I said I would show him, then hopped in the truck, drove up, and pointed out the house. He went and knocked on the door again. After quite a while it opened. They spoke for a bit, and then he came back and asked if I was sure about the description of the dog.

“Was it a poodle?” he asked. 

“No, a old fat cream colored lab. Definitely not a poodle.”

He went back up to the dog owners, and after another 15 minutes of conversation the attacking dog appeared on a leash. I identified it, spoke to the sheriff a little more. Then went home.

The owners apparently “never heard nothin”. The dog was “Never out of the the kennel all day”. And of course “would never attack nobody”.

The moon that to some signifies the start of Saga Dawa Duchen was full by the time I went to bed. Supposedly this holiday is a dharma multiplier day. The karmactic effect of whatever one does is multiplied by ten million.

How auspicious!

Yellow Band

I want to believe. This situation is thrown into stark relief whenever I become disillusioned. The frequency of disillusionment episodes appears to correlate with the number of trivial things I believe in. In fact I can be much more specific by narrowing the “things” category from all possible nouns to those more likely to be referred to by proper names and pronouns; namely people. People are notoriously unreliable. People with only trivial roles in my life are doubly so.

Disillusionment is more awkward when it is accompanied by massive media attention. Robert Fitzpatrick knows this better than most. Bob’s blank “I don’t know what happened” in response to not being raptured may speak of stupidity, but it echos of unquestioning belief. The fabric of Bob’s belief appears more hole than weave, so we find his attitude amusing. Unfortunately, on Sunday, I experienced the evaporation of a belief whose evidence was comparably threadbare.

Many people hold their irrational beliefs close to the vest. Some people’s conversations are peppered with random statements that suggest their belief. Some people pontificate on the righteousness of their point of view; those with a forum to do this can give new taint to the term “a**hole”. Some people wear their belief openly on bumper stickers, T-shirts, caps, and the memo field on donation checks.

The BELIEVE jerseys, caps, and buttons sported by those that believed cyclist Tyler Hamilton was innocent of doping are iconic. The logowear of belief in his innocence is even more iconic after Tyler’s public admission this Sunday of multiple doping events, over multiple years, with multiple people.

Who in their right mind believes a doping-accused-cyclist’s insistence of innocence anymore? Didn’t I learn from Floyd Landis’s epic fiction “Positively False”?

I want to believe. Tyler Hamilton was “The nicest guy in the peloton”. Tyler Hamilton was the guy who rode through hundreds of miles of grueling race stages with bone breaks so ragged they would have left most grown men shaking and gasping in a roadside ditch. Tyler Hamilton was the guy who had to have his teeth capped off after he had ground them down clenching his mouth to the pain he rode through.

Even cycling-savvy people who had examined Tyler’s profession of innocence, and found it wanting, refused to call him out on his guilt. Jonathan Vaughters was quoted as saying of Tyler’s proclamations of innocence: “He really does believe it himself”. He was only caught once; perhaps it was an innocent mistake on his part. Elaborate scenarios of his partial innocence were conceived.

We know now that Tyler never believed it himself. We know that he simply lied, and lied in a very public, and very convincing way. He was able to look people and cameras in the eye and lie.

And then there is Lance Armstrong.

I still want to believe. It may be too late to reconstruct a belief in Lance the drug-free cyclist. It certainly is too late to assemble a framework to care.

LA, however, is more than a former professional cyclist. LA is the world’s most famous cancer survivor. Modern medicine turned him from a shaved-head dying cancer patient to a cyclist competing in one of the toughest sports on earth. He did not ascribe his recovery to winged angels sprinkling him with magic sparkles. LA was injected with amazing synthetic substances, and became better than he had ever been.

It is evident that the amazing substances probably followed him out of the cancer ward and onto the streets of France. It is interesting to note that Armstrong was given EPO to keep him alive while undergoing cancer therapy, and is now vilified for probably taking that same substance to assist in the crushing of his opponents.

I want to believe that people can be better, faster, stronger, and that modern technology can help them. This weekend’s admission by Tyler should have strengthened that belief with evidence, but it is hard to believe someone who lies so well.

Disillusionment is usually difficult. One is left wondering what other unerodible evidence is crap. I do, however, have additional evidence to support beliefs complementary to the disillusionment. I am more firmly convinced that people can be liars with as much skill in their craft as I can demonstrate in gullibility.

What will the next disillusioning sports-related bombshell be? Will Armstrong turn out to never have had cancer? Will Oscar Pistorius turn out to have real legs? Will Dana Torres will turn out to have been born in 1987?

I’ve still got my Livestrong bracelet, but I’ve stopped wearing it in public.

hard core

Returning to Utah it is obvious that the days have been warm. Warm enough to melt the snow almost completely off the south facing slopes of the lower peaks. Snow still coats the north slopes obliterating simple features with an overexposure of white. The hills look less like the south slopes have been scrubbed free of snow by the sun and more like the north slopes have been scrubbed clean of all features and colors by some great cosmic abrasive. Like there is a hard alabaster core that the world is decorated on, and the high points are wearing off to reveal it.

Spring in Utah can be testy. Little disturbances send it running for cover. Trees will bud just to discover a hard frost. A warm still afternoon baked in sun will be bookended by freezing rain and fog. Sometimes it gets windy too.

If I write too accurately about the wind few who have not experienced it will believe me. Wind alone does not snap telephone poles. Wind that rips roves off of houses has a name like “hurricane” or “tornado” not “spring breeze”. It is difficult to describe the wind in a central Utah spring accurately.

I was rained out this past weekend. The start of “the season” will have to wait for the seasons to catch up to it. I was torn until the eve of departure. I could not bring myself to pay good money and drive for hours into a 70% chance of rain. Not when the heater at home still worked and I had paid the gas bill.

Some people did the ride.  They were rained on and blown by wind.  I heard rumors of snow. 

333, the mark of the pest

Bicycling season for me starts with a vengeance this coming weekend. In the early spring of Utah’s low desert my first organized century of the season takes place. Like all season starters I am markedly undertrained for this effort.

To call this event a race would be incorrect. Everyone gets a number, but there are no timers, or judges, or even recognition for who comes in first. However, one should recognize the fact that anytime you place numbers on everyone’s back all the middle aged men are racing.

I firmly deny any intentions to race. I have been told that racing in charity and fun events is immature and frowned upon by most rational people. I, always wishing to appear as rational as possible, would never race during a recreational event. If somebody should be seen with an extra burst of energy in the last few miles, or even sprinting to the finish line, it most assuredly would not be me.

The last time I rode this event I was given the number 333. That is half the mark of the beast.

333 – The mark of the pest

Cycling Tube Boob

Cycling should be boring to watch, and I'm sure for many folks it is. This is natural. The act of cycling is simply the act of pedaling over and over and over again. Sure there is much more amazing scenery in cycling than say basketball.But what goes on should be mind-numbingly dull. one guy pedals while other guys pedal until one goes a little faster...wow.

I can set up my rollers and pedal away for hours re-watching Fabian Cancellara win the 2006 Paris Roubaix, or Tom Boonen win the 2005 tour of Flanders, or my favorite...watching Floyd Landis win the 2006 Tour de France.

When I watch movies on my rollers I turn the speakers up loud so I can catch the dialog. With the cycling I am as likely to be listening to Jimi Hendix as Phil Liggett.

I'm not much of a fan of cycling. I kinda follow it. I was very pleased that Cadel Evans won the 2009 world road race, but I did not find out for a couple of days. Most sports writing bores me to tears. Yet I can watch what should be one of the world's most boring videotaped events with my attention glued to the tube.

Part of it is the exhaustion. Changes in body English or bike control as well tuned athletes are ground down by their own effort. The cyclists are not performing they are expending themselves. Little changes in position alter the amount of power they must generate to maintain speed.

I've watched a couple of marathons and they are not that intriguing to me. The runner tries so hard to conserve energy that the signs of exhaustion and effort are subtle. When the mobile cameras get in close to show what the runner's face looks like they always appear to me to have a “get that camera out of my face” type look. It is not just the exhaustion that makes cycling so interesting to me, as marathon runners also exhaust themselves fully in their discipline.

Perhaps it is the drugs. The riders' not mine. Is “doping” the same as “using”?

This season's marathon training coupled with my gym membership have robbed me of important bicycling DVD time. When I get back from CA the Kestral is going on the rollers and the covers are coming off the DVD's. I have this one of a guy called Alberto Contador (Stephen Colbert says his name means “douchebag” en Espanol) winning the 2007 TDF. I hear the "flying chicken" is in rare form that year!

WRIOD (White Rim In One Day) report

I finally got out to do the White Rim on the 2^nd (10/2/09). Weather was supposed to be beautiful and the length of day was long enough to be one of the last opportunities for me in 2009. The family was well and into the idea so we planned out a route that included a pickup at Potash so they could camp at Gold Bar after spending the day at Arches NP. The route we mapped generally follows the GPS of the route that I actually did. (http://connect.garmin.com/activity/15218921). The plan was to start out from our camp on mineral bottom (horsethief) road about an hour before “dawn” using a small light LED headlamp. I would then arrive about dawn at the switchbacks down to mineral bottom and would then have about 12 hours to get to the pickup point on the Potash road extension just beyond the evaporation ponds. It was a good plan for a first time solo self supported ride around the White Rim.

The weather WAS perfect. The bike made it to the ride in almost perfect shape. The plastic front shifter adjuster cracked so I put the chain on the middle chain-ring and resolved to keep it their. I could actually down-shift by unclipping and rubbing the chain with my heal to push it onto the small chain-ring. I did not do this often.

I was so excited when I started out that I missed the proper short 4wheel drive trail from the camp to mineral bottom road and ended up wandering though the woods in deep sand until close to dawn (about an hour). I was able to go much faster down the mineral bottom road in full light, but I would have liked that hour back at the end of the day.

The White Rim trail is awesome! Everyone should do it. Basically, if a fat guy like me can do it in a day many other folks can to. Sure I pushed the bike up more hills than fashionable, sure I developed some marvelous bruises, sure I bonked like never before, but I was awe-struck and happy and in some element that I wished could be mine.

I arrived at the top of Murphy's Hogback at an average speed of almost 10MPH (discounting the “Lost” episode in the woods). Unfortunately I had burned up most of the available calories in my body. The rest of the White Rim (about half) would take twice as long. I was so toasted by Musselman arch that I did not even take the short stop to see it.

Unknown to me My wife had received the information that, although it is not marked, the road she was to meet me on was illegal to be on after dark. I do not believe this information, but the guys she spoke to were quite insistent. So when I arrived at the pickup spot as the sun went down she was not their.

I could not reasonably bike using my headlamp so I ended up pushing my bike for a couple of hours until I could cycle the last six miles on pavement to Gold Bar. I ran into a couple of workers on the commercial Potash road who gave me a ride till I was off their property (thanks).

All in all a marvelous day. I want to do it again in the spring. Better bike, slightly longer day, more food, and a camera!