So during our recent annual visit with my wife’s cousin and her family up in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, I made another visit to Emerson’s house in Concord. Once again, my wife’s cousin’s husband Chuck was my companion for my pilgrimage. And there was no better way to visit to Concord on a perfect autumn day than in Chuck’s convertible.

The house was a bit different than I remembered it from my first visit many years ago. But what a difference now that I know so much more about the people. It was great to see first hand various rooms and hanging pictures that I’d read about in the Richardson book. To be in the study was thrilling, even though the actual furnishings have been moved to the Concord Museum across the street (which we also visited). I lingered at the study’s fireplace a bit, recalling the beautiful final chapter of the Richardson book wherein Emerson puts out the fire for the last time. I loved the parlor, just trying to imagine the meetings and conversations that took place there, and the myriad luminaries who attended.

I can understand Emerson’s love of the painting in the hallway of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius; the colors are so vivid that it almost looks like a photograph. The Richardson book explained how Emerson may have likened the idea of an Over-Soul to the one huge pool of magma beneath the Earth’s surface, and how we are all each an eruption of that source. It makes me think of the Tao and Buddha nature.

I truly enjoyed seeing Emerson’s walking sticks, his hat, and his lecturing cloak. The tour guides were wonderful, and this time no one said anything about not wishing to discuss Emerson’s philosophy (which we didn’t do anyway because they were so busy). At the end of the tour, I bought Richardson’s book on writing and a couple of postcards, and then sat down and read the opening paragraphs of Nature. Then Chuck and I went round the side of the house to see the grapevine that Emerson had planted. The air smelled like grapes!

After a short tour of The Concord Museum, we made the short drive to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery to pay our respects (like we did last year) and found myself more moved by the headstones, particularly little Waldo’s, wife Lidian’s, and Mary Moody Emerson’s. I told Chuck how central “Aunt Mary” had been to Emerson’s development as a thinker and a writer. Of course we also visited Thoreau.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this visit was another bit of synchronicity that again made me believe that I’m on the right track with my “American Zen” pursuits. As we were driving back through the center of Concord, I was talking to Chuck about my interests in the similarities between Zen and Transcendentalism, when off to our left we spotted a Buddhist monk in full saffron robes walking along the street! Again I laughed and felt exhilarated, especially because Chuck had also witnessed this.

I should note that Chuck was a real trooper through all this. He was in the midst of a Yom Kippur fast (he’s Greek Orthodox, his wife is Jewish, and their family observes traditions from both faiths). The fast was ended later that evening in fine fashion.

This morning I left the house with my rakusu, but also with my backpack, my iPad, hiking boots and socks, a copy of Emerson’s Nature and a volume of Whitman’s poems. Which was silly, because when I awoke this morning, I knew I was going out to the woods instead of the zendo.

I’m not sure why a walk in the woods was preferable to going to the zendo. I know I’ve always been rather solitary (even my kids have now picked up on this and will chastise me about needing to be more social). So I don’t know if it’s that or my growing sense that the Japanese cultural aspects of Zen — meaning the rituals, chanting and sutras — do not resonate with me as much as the ideas of Buddhism. I absolutely find value in zazen, the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, and the precepts, but everything beyond that seems to me to be beyond the point. And then I will check myself with “Well, are you just being lazy? Or being a fair-weather Buddhist?”

Now I see that it’s not laziness. I have plunged headlong into my studies of Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman, precisely because their lives and work resonate with me. I danced around with them (superficially) for years, and now I feel like I’m finally “getting it,” finally feeling immersed in it. And I think it’s because it’s American.

This isn’t racist or jingoistic: Buddhism as flourished precisely because it has always adapted itself to the culture of its new hosts. I’ve felt for sometime that there were common themes in Zen and New England Transcendentalism. Now I find that, while Emerson and Thoreau were, to varying degrees, influenced by Hinduism and Buddhism, a lot of what I took to be their Zen-like thought was actually rooted in Greek and Roman stoicism. So now I’m getting acquainted with the Stoics, and sure enough, there are striking parallels with Zen.

So these ideas have arisen at all times and in all places (which happens to be one of Emerson’s themes). The writings of the Transcendentalists resonate with me because I recognize the ideas from my own thinking as well as from my Taoist and Buddhist reading, and because it is writing grounded in my own culture.

Between this and my continuing doubts regarding rebirth and karma across lifetimes, I’m just not sure I can still call myself a Buddhist. Based on my beliefs and outlook, it still makes sense to me. It just may not make sense to other Buddhists. But then, a true Buddhist would never refer to himself or herself as such.

I wrote the above while sitting in my car at the boat launch on the north side of the Monksville Reservoir. When I finished, I took a brief stroll down to the water, exchanged pleasantries with some fishermen, and went back to the car to head over to Long Pond Ironworks for a short hike.

When I exited the parking lot onto the winding, fairly desolate road leading back to the main road, I had what I can only describe as a “Twin Peaks Moment.”

There, pacing slowly up and down the road, was a Japanese man (certainly east Asian, but struck me as decidedly Japanese) playing bagpipes. This was wonderful on many levels.

One, we were in the area of New Jersey known as The Highlands. Two, after reading some of Nature and writing the above about Zen and western culture, what are the odds of being met with a Japanese man playing bagpipes? Three, he seemed to be improvising (and doing it beautifully), occasionally throwing in almost jazz-like quotes from “Amazing Grace” (granted, a staple of bagpipers everywhere, but it also happens to be my favorite piece of music ever). I lowered my windows and slowed down. When I was along side him, I gave him a thumbs up and he gently nodded while continuing his performance. I kept driving slowly, listening to the pipes fade with the distance, then happened upon a young woman in the middle of the road, standing still on rollerblades and holding a cellphone to her ear but not talking. When I looked toward her to offer a greeting nod, her face was expressionless, and her left eye was eerily cold and dead.

When I pulled out onto the main road, I couldn’t stop laughing. Whatever choice bit of synchronicity this was, I took it to be an omen that I’m on the right track. It was exhilarating.

The short hike at Long Pond was beautiful and peaceful. I stopped at one of the lookout platforms and read a little bit of Whitman:

Now I will do nothing but listen,
To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it.

I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames,
clack of sticks cooking my meals,
I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,
I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following,
Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night,
Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of
work-people at their meals,
The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick,
The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronouncing
a death-sentence,
The heave’e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves, the
refrain of the anchor-lifters,
The ring of alarm-bells, the cry of fire, the whirr of swift-streaking
engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and color’d lights,
The steam-whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars,
The slow march play’d at the head of the association marching two and two,
(They go to guard some corpse, the flag-tops are draped with black muslin.)

I hear the violoncello, (’tis the young man’s heart’s complaint,)
I hear the key’d cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears,
It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast.

I hear the chorus, it is a grand opera,
Ah this indeed is music—this suits me.

A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me,
The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full.

I hear the train’d soprano (what work with hers is this?)
The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies,
It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess’d them,
It sails me, I dab with bare feet, they are lick’d by the indolent waves,
I am cut by bitter and angry hail, I lose my breath,
Steep’d amid honey’d morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death,
At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,
And that we call Being.

I managed 40 days when I had a decidedly unmindful day and went to bed with only 40 minutes of zazen under my belt. I didn’t realize this until the next morning.

Naturally I tried to find a way to fudge the results, but that quickly became unsatisfactory. I’d blown it.

So I started again. But this next attempt lasted just 14 days.

The good part of this — the Zen takeaway, if you will — is that I didn’t beat myself up over it, didn’t throw up my hands and question my commitment. But I did question the value of the 108 Gates challenge. (And yes, I did have another internal debate as to whether I was just trying to give myself an out, and ultimately decided I was not.)

Zazen is an important part of my practice. Some teachers say it is the most important part. For me, mindfulness seems more important than zazen. In any case, I started to think about why sitting for an hour a day for 108 days should even be a goal.

A friend of mine who is a talented cook says he could never do it for a living because that would take a lot of the joy out of it. Some days, the challenge made my sitting seem more of a chore than a joy. The 108 Gates had become a distraction, perhaps even an attachment.

Some days, expecially at the zendo, I will sit for an hour or more, and that feels fine. At home, I will sit for 20 minutes in the morning and again in the evening. Some days I only get in one sitting. And yes, there are occasional days when I miss sitting at all.

Each of the days during the challenge when I missed putting in an hour were days when I was simply concerned with just sitting rather than with attaining a goal. That’s when zazen feels the best.

Pokemon, for anyone not familiar with it, is a Japanese cartoon about young people who capture and train strange little creatures who possess various powers and abilities and are made to compete or battle against each other. It has spawned a complex trading card game as well as a video game played on Nintendo’s hand-held DS platform. My son enjoys both, but is particularly fond of the video version.

A few months back, one of my son’s friends told him about a regional Pokemon competition happening not far from where we live. Patrick asked if I would take him. I looked it up online, saw that it was free to enter and would be over by noon, so I agreed.

Several weeks later, we arrived an hour early at the convention center in Secaucus to find a massive line of children and their parents snaking from the closed doors, through the underground parking, out the other side of the garage and up the roadway. Our hearts sank a little as there were a limited number of slots for competitors, and it was first come, first served.

But we managed to get in, only to wait on another line to be checked in and to have Patrick’s team (on the DS) approved. Patrick was then escorted to a player table while I was sent to the periphery of the player area with the other friends and families.

I expected Patrick to maybe make it through the first couple of rounds, since this was his first competition and there were so many serious-looking players in attendance. This was to be a simple elimination: winners moved on to the next round, losers would go home. Once all the players were seated, there was a rousing countdown (the staff for the event were very energetic) and they were off, thumbs a-blazing.

And Patrick kept winning.

When all was said and done, he placed third out of more than 500 players in his division. This earned him an invitation to the nationals and a stipend to help with travel expenses. He was interviewed by reporters from two newspapers.

The whole experience was surreal to me. But I was proud of my son. He just wanted to have fun. He stayed calm and was a complete gentleman, wishing his opponent good luck at the start of each match and shaking hands at the end.

Look what can happen when you approach something with joy and without expectations!

We figured it was too expensive a proposition for our whole family to go to Indianapolis. My wife said since I’d started this with Patrick, I should see it through with him. So off we went.

The Nationals were conducted a bit differently: Seven rounds, and the top 16 players with the best win/loss records would then compete the next day for eight slots at the World Championship next month in San Diego. Patrick won his first three matches, then lost the remaining four. It was a good run. And he took it very well. A dash across the hall to the Pokemon vendors, and all was right with the world again.

The trip was a marvelous father/son adventure. Indianapolis is a beautiful city. We met wonderful people from all over the country (and Canada). The people of Indiana couldn’t have been nicer. We had a great time at the Indianapolis Zoo and riding a paddle boat on the canal that runs through the city.

And I got to visit the hometown of my favorite author.

At the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, we saw some of Vonnegut’s artwork, exhibits detailing his family’s history, even a pair of his reading glasses. Patrick used a typewriter for the first time, in a room where they had recreated Vonnegut’s workspace. This quote was painted on one of the walls, a line from Cat’s Cradle that immediately came to mind when Patrick made the Pokemon Nationals:

Unusual travel plans are dancing lessons from God.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. ~ Bertrand Russell

It has been just over a year since Kyron Horman disappeared from his school in Portland, Oregon. Much money and manpower has been spent looking for him, and authorities don’t seem any closer to find him or explaining what happened to him. His stepmother, who was the last person to see him, is not a named suspect. But most people who have followed the story believe she knows more than she has said.

I have been following his story from day one. I don’t know why, but when I saw Kyron’s picture, I took an instant liking to him. Perhaps it’s because he reminds me of my own son.

Some have been critical of the amount of attention Kyron’s story has gotten. They point out that children go missing every day, and ask why Kyron’s story is so special.

A lot of the attention has to do with the tremendous efforts of Kyron’s parents to make sure their son is not forgotten, and to make sure that people keep an eye out for him. I can only applaud their efforts. My heart breaks for them.

My heart breaks for missing and abused children almost every day.

Every time I read of some tragedy committed against a child — all too often by someone they trusted — I whisper “I’m sorry,” as if there was something I could have done to save them. I swear, if I could be granted a super power, it would be to know whenever a child is being harmed, and to be able to bolt to them in an instant to stop it.

I’d never have a moment’s rest.

From a Buddhist perspective, am I causing myself to suffer by clinging to these thoughts? Maybe so. But I find it difficult to be dispassionate about such things. It’s one of the aspects of Buddhism with which I struggle.

There is a scene in Woody Allen’s film Radio Days in which the family is listening to a live radio broadcast of the rescue of a little girl who has fallen down an abandoned well. The scene was inspired by the true story of three-year-old Kathy Fiscus back in 1949. The ensuing rescue effort was broadcast live via radio as well as the still-novel medium of television. I remember my dad telling me about it. The world was riveted by the story.

In the film, as in the real-life incident, the little girl did not survive. The family in the film is quietly devastated by the news. The father, holding his own little girl on his lap through all this, holds her a little tighter, barely able to contain his tears.

In the absence of any super powers, this may be the best I can hope for. These terrible stories will continue to come. I will hold my children a little tighter. And I will keep a watchful eye on all the other children in my small corner of the world.

He was the oldest of four sons. My dad always said it was Harry who got the family through the Great Depression. He was like a second father to me. He gave me my first Bible, my first dictionary, my first rifle, my love of the mountains, and along with my dad, my love and appreciation of America and its history.

While I have no recollection of my parents ever hitting me, I very clearly recall the day when I was five years old, bumped my head getting into my dad’s car, and uncharacteristically uttered an expletive. As soon as the word left my lips, I felt Harry’s hand smack the back of my head. It was the only time he ever did something like that. Lesson learned.

In the late 50s, Harry purchased a little over two acres of land in Sussex County, New Jersey. His plan was to build a house there for himself and his aging mother, to grow his own food, and to hunt and fish in the as yet unspoiled countryside.

First he built a small, one-room cabin in which he could live while working on his project. Shortly after the house’s foundation was put in, he took ill, and the house project was abandoned. But he kept the land and the cabin, and it became my favorite summer destination.

My dad and I (and later my younger brother Joe) would ride out there with Harry in his ramshackle Ford Falcon. It really was paradise for a young boy. Fishing. Exploring. Catching newts. Learning to shoot targets with a muzzle-loading rifle. Campfire cooking. The night sky ablaze with more stars than I’d ever seen. The thrilling mystery of being able to pull in stations from Canada through the clear night air on the portable radio. The stillness of the deep woods, with no planes or cars humming in the background. Just the wind in the trees, the cicadas, and later the sounds of all those night creatures.

When Harry died, he left that cabin to me in his will. He had stipulated that it be sold and the money used for my education. I convinced my parents to hang on to it, and I did return there a couple of times with Dad. But it wasn’t the same. How could it be?

Eventually, my parents did sell it to the owner of some adjacent property, because he promised not to develop it. I’ve returned there several times over the years, just to see if I could still find it. Though the cabin is slowly returning to nature, the gentleman has kept his word.

Given my later appreciation of the works of Henry David Thoreau, I have wished more than once that we could have kept the cabin. Regardless, Harry and the cabin are with me still.

Happy Birthday, Uncle Ha.