A level playing field

Winters here can sometimes be downright exciting. 

 

Our acre is not a prime one, consisting of rocks and heavy clay, sloping away from the sun, and graced with an ill-made house that would cost more to bring up to code than its sale value. Accordingly, we were able to afford it. 😁

 

As the "dry wash" runs through the middle of the place, there's also the risk of flooding. In January of 1996, four inches of rain fell on the pasture lands uphill from us in a day, the creek jumped its banks to nearly reach the floor of the playhouse, moving it a couple of inches downstream. A bow wave appeared on the corner of the farmhouse's foundation, our creek bridges and a couple of fences vanished, and several trees leaned in the direction of the flow, which was north. Half their root wads were lifted into the air; they had to be firewooded.

Summers are interesting in their own way. Rain can hold off for as much as one hundred days at a time. Garden soil often cracks in zigzags even beneath deep mulch, the Douglas firs drop millions of needles, and the foliage of Oregon ash turns a wintry, shriveled brown. All this can be from just the dryness, but in the last decade, there's been a notable increase in heat as well.

The natural grain of the hut's weathered fence-board exterior was attractive, but without the shade tree something would have to be done to increase reflectivity. I painted the roof white.

Then the walls.

And finally even the trim.

 

Nothing much helped. If the ambient temperature was ninety degrees Fahrenheit, the interior approached one hundred. This was disconcerting, as painting the roof of the farmhouse had dropped summer highs by ten degrees. I installed a small fan to blow out air from near the ceiling, which helped a little, but what really worked was to add inexpensive reed shades to the west-facing exterior.

 

In March of 2019 I notified my teacher that my body was beginning to fail me; not only could I not really hear Dharma talks, even with a hearing aid, but I was having trouble lasting through the retreats sitting in a chair, let alone on a kneeling bench.

She advised me to look into practicing with an online sangha. This proved to be a good match, and the hermitage became, in effect, a bit of a monastery, as I began "sitting" with people from all over the planet on a regular basis. The summer heat proved to be no obstacle, as I could simply take my laptop into the house and participate from my relatively cool bedroom.

Spring and fall are the most comfortable times for hut life, but all seasons are good for online fellowship.

Gatherings are important to faiths as a rule, as one gets to practice what one is learning about ethics by interacting with others. Shakyamuni's four truths concern eliminating unnecessary suffering through letting go of regret (past) and anxiety (future), a skill one can practice in a hermitage, but much of the point of having such a skill is to apply it in the presence of others, thus making the means of achieving equanimity available to society at large.

This is why Shakyamuni's fourth truth concerns mostly ethical admonitions. Right speech, actions and livelihood can barely be practiced in a social vacuum. Immersed in a sangha (community of Buddhists), one practices these paths in a setting with agreed-upon rules, then extends the practices into interacting with the wider world.

Since the beginning of the Internet (and even earlier) there have been discussions as to whether teleconference practice "counts," but, in the words of Ikkyu:

If at the end of our journey 

There be no final resting place, 

How can there be
A way to lose ourselves in?

An online sangha might seem to present limited opportunity for right action, but by participating in the e-bulletin board, one discovers who needs what and has an opportunity to be of use to them (and, of course, vice versa). All this in a setting in which the action-at-a-distance, non-synchronous nature of online communications importantly provides access for people with disabilities.

I'm nearly deaf, but can hear others through a headset or earbud. I don't see well, but can adjust the distance to the screen, and play with the lighting. I have chronic lumbar strain, but can "sit" in a zero gravity chair. I have memory issues, but can unobtrusively work from an on-screen cheat sheet for all my chanting and ritual needs. I'm incontinent, but can drop out any time by turning off my video, and run to the pottie and back. 

Lastly, I'm prone to seizures; if I'm involved in a discussion and feel a petit mal coming, again I can turn off the video for a bit and return when I'm myself again. All this without materially inconveniencing others. Driving to and from our "brick-and-mortar" zendo had taken fifty minutes each way; aside from the carbon footprint, I'd become a bit dangerous and needed to get out from behind the wheel.

Also, as the online sangha records its events, if I'm too sick to log in or am double booked, I can catch up later.

All this was true for not only me but many others, so the online sangha, an almost unique one at the time, provided the one spiritual home many could find, due to a wide array of circumstances and conditions they may have felt could inconvenience others in person.

Laptop hermiting/zazenkai attendance proved to be not only very freeing and provide a level playing field, but perfect for those times the roads were covered with snow or the hut's temperature soared toward a hundred.

And then ... the pandemic arrived.