Be Here Now all over again

Here is a story from my first year in India along with a few facts about life in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains.

On our first trip to India, my former partner and I planned a weekend trip to meet his sister and her husband in Shimla. She wanted to visit because it was used as a setting in so many Bollywood movies. Early one morning we began our journey on a treacherous mountain road, racing 225 km across northern India in a rinky-dink cab with a madcap driver--even by Indian standards. He careened and jammed, reducing the almost seven hour trip from McLeod Ganj to under five. It was only my second long trip by car in India. This is not a myth: the roads and the driving are unlike anything in the West. Over 350 people a day die on Indian roads, which in a population of more than a billion plus seems miniscule until you figure into the calculation that fewer than 10% of the population use cars. It takes some getting used to.

The power brokers of the British Raj selected this idyllic spot for its summer headquarters when the heat of the plains became too much for their thin blood. A mile and half above sea level, Shimla is now the capital of Himachal Pradesh. It’s a more picture perfect hill station than our humble McLeod Ganj. There’s a pedestrian mall that you get up to via a crowded elevator, a substantial Anglican Church, a handsome stock of colonial buildings still in use as offices for the renowned Indian bureaucracy, lots of restaurants and coffee shops. A few of the fine bungalows that the highly placed British civil officers demanded for their families and staff have been carefully preserved. 

One of the oldest small gauge railroads in India shuttled the overlords, their families and extensive retinue up the steep mountain. Though still connected to the Indian Railway, it’s kept in service as a tourist attraction. You pay your fare, ride a couple of stops, get off, cross the track, and wait for an uphill train. We’re not talking about Six Flags. We’re stepping back at least 150 years into the remnants of the British Raj.

For Hindus, Shimla is also revered as one of the traditional holy sites of Lord Hanuman. Though this goes back to ancient times, a very recent addition to the landscape has been a huge statue of the monkey god, 108 feet, higher up on Jakhu Hill (an anomaly in a land of the metric system, but probably something to do with the cost of concrete and getting to a mystic number. It’s very tall). 

Early in the afternoon our little group took the toy train down hill. On the way back up we were told about a small temple that might be worth a visit. We either walked or grabbed a quick cab from the train station to a very typical Indian temple. Inside the gate one of the baba’s was chanting, breaking coconuts and pouring their milk over the bonnet of a devotee’s car; I noticed that it was not brand new; perhaps the new owner was trying to wipe the karmic slate clean in anticipation of treacherous mountain roads. The only way I can describe it is “very Indian.” Even though I’d met several Indian teachers in California, including Swami Muktananda who came with all the cultural guru trappings, I felt slightly uncomfortable. It was certainly not something that Father Halloran would be doing in the parking lot of Saint Catherine’s--breaking coconuts and pouring the milk over the hood of mother's Ford station wagon, but I can hardly get that image out of my head now that it's planted.

We managed to squeeze past this elaborate ritual and came into a large hall where there was some intense chanting, surprisingly so. In most Indian temples people line up, offer a few rupee notes, get a blessing and leave. As a Hanuman shrine, it was overrun with hundreds of monkeys scarfing up tons of bananas set out as offerings. Monkeys are particularly nasty creatures, and living in a temple courtyard does not make them civilized, but Saturday outing at a temple, and people were posing for selfies with the monkeys using their smartphones. The depth of the devotions was refreshing, but the whole scene still felt very foreign. There was a lot of family talk in Hindi and after a few pictures for the folks back home, I wandered off.

The temple was built into the side of a hill. I descended to the level below the main hall where there was another highly decorated temple on a small courtyard. I was the only person there. I wandered in, and was greeted by a life-sized statue of a baba, sādhu, or monk, lots of fresh flowers and food offerings. I’d stumbled into the samadhi shrine of the temple’s founder. I bowed, turned, and was about to leave when it hit me, really hit me! It was not that particular emotional feeling that Indians describe as bhakti. It was more deep recognition; “I know that man.” The lifelike, life sized, very colorful, idealized figure was definitely a person that I’d seen somewhere. I pulled out my phone and within a few minutes had solved the mystery. It was Neem Karoli Baba, Ram Dass’s guru. Neem Karoli was not from the plains of India. He’d spent his life wandering these hills of northern India. His main temple and ashram were further north in Uttarakhand but perhaps we’d found a subtemple, or the temple of one of his disciples. The deity fit; his protector, not quite sure how to describe the relationship, was Lord Hanuman.

640 × 426

The pieces tumbled together. You’ve probably heard about Ram Das. Who hasn’t? He wrote the wildly popular New Age book called “Be Here Now” in the 70’s. It became one of the Bibles of the hippies. I met him on four or five occasions. He was always extremely gracious and lively. Even in a large group, he seemed to be able to focus on you in a way that felt very personal. During my tenure as Director of Maitri, I asked him to come to Hartford Street to do a fundraiser. I remember that it was after Issan had died and Steve had resigned because Phil did the introduction. 

Even though the enormous death HIV/AIDS toll had begun to decline by the mid-90’s, there were still thousands of infected men facing an early death. An overflowing crowd sat zazen in our small zendo. Ram Das sat in the teacher’s seat and, as I remember clearly, his head seemed to be on a swivel, bouncing around, while all the zennies were stiff as boards, staring straight ahead.

He began his talk with a kind chuckle and said, “I am going to talk about the Self and dying. Oh sorry, no-self, I have to remember that I am in a Buddhist crowd even if the notion entirely escapes me.” Then he began to talk about one of his visions after he first returned from India: to create a center for conscious dying. The idea was to establish a kind of ashram for people who were dying and interested in various conscious exercises, including mediation, during their dying process. He even said that he had a location picked out. Then he said that he, or the group that was working with him abandoned the idea because no one was interested. I wondered why he would throw this out into a group of gay men, the majority of whom were facing death. Was it a kind of challenge? How would they choose to spend their few precious last months, weeks, days?

Then he turned towards me and asked me about the hospice. I said that Issan had been committed to making life as normal as possible for the residents, but we had no requirement that residents had to be particularly conscious, spiritually or otherwise, during their last bit of this-life-alive time; that we were committed to allowing the individual's path to unfold. There were however a few residents who meditated as much as possible. He nodded and smiled. 

We collected a few hundred dollars that evening to help pay the bills, but we received a different kind of gift, not pouring coconut milk over a second hard car, but an invitation to examine what was really important about life, especially when the end is definitely in sight. 

Foggy Father Ed McKinnon

When I was in the Jesuit Philosophate (1968-1969/70), which just meant fulfilling some canonical requirement for Thomistic philosophy, I lived with five other young Jesuits in a small house near Boston College. After being locked down in Shadowbrook for a bit more than two years with strict rules covering every aspect of life every hour of the day, we were enjoying some freedom. From time to time we’d sneak out to a well known art house in Kenmore Square near the Boston Red Socks ball park. I think it was called Kenmore Square but it might have been The Fine Arts Theater.. 

The reason that I mention art house movies is a very funny story that popped up about one of my Jesuit Philosophy teachers, Ed MacKinnon, or as we used to call him affectionately Foggy MacKinnon. 

One night we went to a forbidden movie, Pasolinin’s Teorema. It became the inspiration for Nick Nolte’s “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” another wonderful film. In Pasolini’s film a mysterious character shows up at an upper class family villa in Milan and begins by sleeping with the maid, then the son, then the mother, then the father. He was of course a Jesus figure. It was Pasolini, what do you expect? Anyway it was long enough for an intermission, and when we went for popcorn, there was Foggy MacKinnon standing in the lobby looking rather bemused.. Rather than a rebuke for sneaking out, he just said, “Thank God they don’t have any pets.”

https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/6460

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teorema

Ed MacKinnon, whom we affectionately called “Foggy,” was one of the promising young philosophy professors at Weston and Boston College. After my novitiate at Shadowbrook, I went to Philosophy and for reasons not altogether clear to me, I was also ready to pick a fight. Imagine. Ed had a Ph.D in physics from Saint Louis University, and had done several years of postdoc work at Yale in philosophy. He was supposed to form a bridge between science and faith. I had no idea what he was talking about. Of course I wouldn't admit it--actually was too busy doing art to spend enough time in class to ask any useful questions. So I missed that boat entirely. My loss

Once Ed went to the minister at Weston and asked for a car to drive to a conference, I think at McGill. What would be better preparation for delivering an important paper than a relaxing drive through the Adirondacks to Canada. He arrived, parked the car, delivered the paper, answered questions and then left quickly, grabbed a cab to the airport and boarded a flight back to Logan. The minister came to his room when he heard that Ed had returned to get the keys for the car. Ed said “What car?” I may have some of the details wrong but I think the story is basically correct. 

When I was in California I heard that Ed had gone to another conference about resolving the conflicting claims of science and theology, or as he says, “examines an influential argument that the intelligibility of the universe requires a creator.” (Why is There Something? Philosophia 51 (2): 835-855. 2023. He is still dealing with the problem today). We were told that he laid out the positions carefully, and then announced that after studying the problem for a number of years, he found the agnostic position persuasive and was going to leave the Jesuits.

I do not know if this story is correct, but it’s a great story. I did meet up with him one more time. I think it was at an event that Fred Tollini organized for New Englanders and Jesuit friends who had lived together at Virgil Barber House near the Yale campus. Ed had just taken a new position at Cal Hayward where he spent his entire career after BC. And he’d married. I am pretty sure that I asked about his current position regarding the Church, as I had just left and publicly said that I’d tossed out the whole shebang. He demurred, but offered that he was now very happy. He’d met a woman who had been a nun at a support group for former religious. He called it a “Religious Lonely Hearts Club.” I didn’t say that I had met one or two former Jesuits in gay bars so maybe I could borrow the designation. Maybe he was not so hung up on the conundrum between faith and science. Maybe he was just lonely and decided that he wanted to marry. 

End of story. Retelling them is how I pass long lonely nights in a remote Indian village.

https://philpeople.org/profiles/edward-mackinnon

Allen and Phil's last conversation

I can’t say that I had a front row seat, but I got as close as he allowed, even to his friends. I was present at all their meetings when Allen came to Hartford Street during the years that I lived with Phil. Perhaps a few others acted as his amanuensis, but I picked up the task whenever I could, knowing that it was a rare privilege. I answered the door and made the tea. It happened in what were our public room so it was appropriate to be there, but I was polite, kept my mouth shut and listened carefully. 

They were giants and yet in some ways they acted like kids on a sandlot. Of course they were older so the shouting was replaced with lots of pauses, keywords that brought a chuckle, “do you remember…” followed by the briefest notation said more than enough. They were old friends who never had enough time together, old friends at the end of their lives who realized that there was never enough time but what did remain was precious and had to be enough. They always seemed to pick up exactly where they left off. I sat trying to hear where there was perhaps new insight, but their love for one another, the appreciation and respect between them was so thick it didn’t matter.

Their meetings were like clockwork. Phil was always getting ready to go to the zendo as he did twice every day, and that took at least an hour. Allen would arrive at 3:30, 4 at the latest. It never went much past 5:30. Allen would always politely excuse himself saying that other friends were waiting. Allen was a creature of the night, and Phil only operated in daylight where he had a fighting chance of avoiding the sharp edges of furniture and the unexpected drop of steps. Dinner or lunch for some reason were never included. Perhaps it was the noise of a restaurant, or that they wanted to get to the part that mattered, being with one another.

Allen had become what he always wanted, a public figure whose opinion was sought after, a poet whose work was respected, a firebrand who fought for things he really believed in, even if it was Nambla. I cannot say if Phil was happy being a Zen monk with the same certainty. I never got the sense that he had really found a true vocation, but it was a job he relished, and he did it so thoroughly and thoughtfully that he appeared happy though there was always some dogged anger that would appear when you least expected it. There were other rewards for him, like really discovering his true nature which is not an insignificant prize. 

Phil had a small circle of devoted friends, and they were faithful. He was a great raconteur and lively companion. They would come and visit, Lou Hartman, Gary Snyder and Michael McClure,

but I only saw Phil cry twice. By the time that Issan took his last breath, it was the end of such a long difficult process that there were not many tears. Our breathing, all of us had been as hard as his as we sat by his bed. We were too worn out to cry. No tears.

But when Phil  told me the story of the search party for Lew; how Gary had organized a posse looking and hoping that he was not lost, his eyes filled with tears. He loved the guy. 

He loved the way he used words, and they had the same mistress, all words in the English dictionary. Phil is the only man I know who actually read the whole thing, page after page, line after line. 

There was no trace of Lew”s body. Maybe he’d jumped into a hidden car and escaped to Mexico. No, that was just wishful thinking  He had killed himself or fallen into a deep ravine. He and Gary had both known he was depressed. No words could help.

Tears. Just the memory and tears. It was still raw.

I was with Phil when Allen phoned to say that he was going to die. My memory says that we were sitting in the living room at Hartford Street, but I actually think we were in Phil’s small apartment in the basement of the hospice, in the small room that opened onto the garden. That is where Phil’s phone was, and I am certain that Allen used that number. Phil had been expecting a call. Allen was due to visit and Phil would have known the exact dates. Allen would have also known when was the best time to reach Phil whose schedule was almost set in stone. He smiled broadly when he said hello and then fell silent. His face lost all expression.

There were very few words, “”I’m so sorry. Yes I understand that you won’t be able to travel to the West Coast again. Give my love to Gregory. I love you. Good bye.” There are times when even words fail. They were both poets and both Buddhists so they’d pushed words’ limits. 

He put the receiver down and told me that Allen was going to die, that he had cancer and there was no hope. Then he started to cry and asked to be left alone. I knew that there were tears on both ends of the call. I told him that I was available to get anything he needed and shifted into the Maitri’s office which was in the adjacent room. At 5:30 he emerged from his bedroom in his robes and silently began up the stairs towards the zendo. Sitting was at 6.    

Lord Krishna comes to tea

 I knew that Allen was in town when there was a knock at the front door at 3:30 exactly. A young man, 21 but not a month more, clean shaven, holding a book, asked, “Is this the Philip Whalen Zendo?” I invited him into the living room where he sat down and quietly continued his reading.  Allen would be at the door shortly; I could hear Phil beginning to make his way up the stairs. He and Allen shared years of friendship. They were punctual. I began to prepare tea.

I loved when Phil’s friends came to visit. Phil was on his best behavior. Not that he was normally badly behaved though in private moments he could be angry, even insulting. Despite being one of the foremost leaders of a movement that questioned the very roots of believing and behaving what my parents taught me, when he was proper, he was extremely proper. But there was another quality to the conversations with his poet friends. Their language was careful and measured. It was literate. I was always looking for any innuendos, and I loved their laughter. It was poking fun without the slightest hint of slighting someone.

Phil of course knew Allen’s long time companion, Peter Orlovsky, and talked openly about Peter’s drug addiction. Phil joked to me about Allen being a follower of “the Cult of Boys,” but this was the first time that Allen had brought a young lover with him. Phil was not very interested in sex himself, reinforced or dictated by his isolated personal habits, but I knew I would be looking for Phil’s reaction. How would he treat a young lover?

The young man and I sat a short distance from Phil and Allen. There were barely pauses in their conversation. It doesn’t matter what it was about. It could have been Buddhism, Trungpa, Diane de Prima or other poets who passed through the Disembodied School at RMDC, or even where to get the best Chinese food in San Francisco. They were friends, and though we weren’t excluded, we were not included. What was clear is that his young companion admired Allen. He hung on every word, carefully listening to each line, laughing when it was appropriate. Allen for his part was attentive to the young man. Not condescending or at all lecherous, he was careful that his friend was treated like an invited guest

Yes I admit that I entertained the possibility that there was some kind of coercion behind the young man’s presence. The age gap was enormous, and there have always been rumors about Allen’s sexual exploits. I also had a distasteful experience of being manipulated by an older man. But at least that afternoon, I was not sitting with a boy-toy but a bright young man who genuinely liked older men.

I’d been reading Christopher Isherwood’s tribute to his guru, Swami Prabhavananda, My Guru and His Disciple. Isherwood asked the Swami a hesitant question about a new relationship with a young man. Isherwood confessed that, given his experience in the stiff Victorian world of English Catholicism, he was expecting a censorious pronouncement. Instead Prabhavananda told him to treat his lover like Lord Krishna.

Then it hit me. I’d been to tea with Lord Krishna.

A year later I was sitting with Phil when Allen called to tell him that he was dying. Phil cried.