For those of you that may be familiar with the Wanderling and his interactions with the shaman man of spells called Obeahman high in the mountains of Jamaica you may recall that when a young girl from the village was hit by a car, the parents, who could not afford a regular medical doctor, opted to have their daughter taken to the Obeah. The Wanderling and another village member carried the girl in a sling-like hammock slung between two long wooden poles up the hazardous mountain trail to the Obeahman's abode. During that several hour period, although breathing, the girl never regained consciousness. The Wanderling was not allowed to go into the Obeah's hut bcause he was white, nor were any of the rituals performed observed, that is, if any at all were performed. The next morning the Wanderling ended up clear down the mountain and didn't exactly see what happened to the girl. About two weeks later she was seen to be playing with other village childern as though nothing had ever happened. No marks, scars, scraches, casts or anything else. Many months later the Wanderling contracted Dengue Fever and laid in his bed sweating in pools of water, delirious with a high fever, not eating, and basically unable to move. A villager happened by and reported how sick he was to a village elder. He inturn passed word to the Obeah. Under NO circumstances had the Obeah ever been known to leave his mountain lair, everyone in need of his services ALWAYS had to go to him no matter how serious the situation. However, much to the suprise of everyone in the village and others for miles and miles around, within a few hours of hearing of the Wanderling's condition he showed up on the veranda. He would not enter his house, again because the Wanderling was a white man, but he did remove spiritual items and herbs from his Medicine Bag called an Oanga Bag and perform a set of rituals that included spreading sand and ashes in a circle, casting bones into the circle, sitting Buddha-like doing some chanting and using smoke that waifted throughout the house. The next day the Wanderling was up and around, sore, and except for a substantial loss of weight and weak from having not eaten, OK. The Obeah was gone.

The day after the Obeah departed and following a night of heavy wind and rain, the Wanderling, conscious but racked with pain, for the first time in days was able to move and hobbled himself out onto the veranda. Barely able to stay upright he stood before the Shaman's Circle, and despite the severity of the storm of the night before, the circle was still in place just as it had been left by the man of spells. An ever so slight breeze came up and spread across the veranda floor twisting itself into a small dust-devil-like Vortex encompassing the Wanderling's bare feet and legs with the ash and sand of the circle. As the twisting breeze climbed his body the pain dissipated eventually disappearing altogether along with the wind.

In an incredibly interesting conincidence, almost paralleling the Wanderling's experience as described above, Enlightened Zen master Hsu Yun (1840-1959), had the following striking similar incident:

"Later he (Hsu Yun) caught malaria and dysentery and was dying in a deserted temple on the top of a mountain when the beggar appeared again to give him the hot water and medicine that saved him. The begger, who had given his name as Wen Chi, asked several questions which Hsu Yun did not understand and could not answer because he was still unenlightened and did not understand the living meaning of Ch'an dialogue. Although he was told by the beggar that the latter was known in every monastery on the Five-Peaked Mountain, when Hsu Yun arrived there and asked the monks about Wen Chi no one knew him. Later he mentioned the incident to an elderly abbot who brought his palms together and said: 'That beggar was the transformation body of Manjusri Bodhisattva.' Only then did the master realize that he had actually met the Bodhisattva who had saved him twice on the long journey."

Although he was told by the beggar that the latter was known in every monastery on the Five-Peaked Mountain, when Hsu Yun arrived there and asked the monks about Wen Chi no one had ever heard of him. Similarly, several days after the initial episode of carrying the young girl up the mountains to the Obeah's hut the Wanderling returned to seek him out. The following is what the Wanderling wrote about that incident:

"As for me, I just wanted to know for sure. A couple of days later when I was able to walk and was much less sore I hiked back up the winding mountain trail to the Obeah's place. When I got to the clearing where his hut should have been, and had been a few nights before, nothing was there. No hut, no fire pit, no nothing. Not only that, to me, it looked as though nothing had ever been there."

http://sped2work.tripod.com/dengue.html

PART I

The following quote is by W. Somerset Maugham and relates to one man's search and attainment of spiritual Enlightenment:

 

"The man I am writing about is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature."

In the early to mid 1940s English author and playwright W. Somerset Maugham published his novel "The Razor's Edge." The novel chronicled the adventures of a young man from America Maugham called Laurence Darrell as he searched for and eventually attained spiritual Enlightenment following WWI. The search led him through Europe to India, the Far East and eventually back to the United States just before the outbreak of WWII. It was of the man Maugham called Darrell that he wrote the above paragraph. The story that follows tells of my meeting with that "remarkable creature" in real life and the to-this-day downstream outflow from that encounter. Although the person Maugham called Darrell in his novel did not follow or belong to any particular Zen or Buddhist sect, and, although his Awakening experience was not under Zen dictates, but the guidance of a person on the Indian side of things, as were BOTH the Buddha and Bodhidharma, his Awakening, like theirs, was universal. The man, refered to by me below as my "Zen mentor" and sometimes "the man next door," was however, one-in-the-same person W. Somerset Maugham crafted his story "The Razor's Edge" around. Where and how Maugham met the man initially was never made clear, but Maugham, being the master story teller he was, carefully weaved broad bits of true facts with the poetic license of the fiction writer. In 1972, following a series of personal discussions about my Zen mentor and my journey along the path in his footsteps, a friend backtracked through the notes taken and typed the following, which are presented to you now basically unedited:

A PRELUDE TO ENLIGHTENMENT:

"Prior to the advent of the soaring '60s, that is, in the unenlightened middle-to-late '50s, I was a teenager growing up in automobile conscious southern California and owned an immaculately spotless early model Ford woodie wagon. Like most high school kids whose cars are a big part of their life, I spent enormous amounts of time maintaining and reworking mine in an exacting and meticulous standard never before dreamed of by the manufacturer. I scraped, sanded, smoothed, bleached, stained, and spar varnished the wood beyond the brightest of the brightwork on the most expensive yacht. There was such a depth of reflection to the wood that a person could hold their arm to the darkened inner door panels and see themselves with clarity to their armpit. The most important thing for me however, was the popularity the car provided during my high school years. I could cruise the beach and high school campus with my buddies and girls would literally clamor for a ride.

"During those easy going I-like-Ike high school days, the house next door went up for sale and was purchased by a single older man in what was then an otherwise family oriented beach community. To most of us the man seemed somewhat weird. He walked everywhere (hsing-chiao) and was almost always barefoot. Everyday, weather permitting, he wore the same simple clothes. If warm, a black teeshirt; if cold, a bulky knit navy blue turtleneck sweater with dark pants and a wide belt, topped with a dark blue greek fisherman's cap, which he always tipped most graciously each day toward my grandmother as he returned from his routine early morning walks.

THE MEETING:

"One morning I parked my car in the driveway in order to work on the wood for the umpteenth trillionth time when I noticed the man next door had stopped to look at the wagon. In a mellow, almost Shakespearean voice he told me how beautiful he thought the wood was and how he admired my endeavors to keep it so. He asked if it would be all right to touch the wood and as I nodded in approval, he ran his fingers softly over the surface in such a strange and exacting manner that he and the wood seemed as one. No racehorse trainer could have stroked or curried a prize thoroughbred in a more loving way. When we made eye contact for the first time I was set aback, almost stunned, by the overwhelming calmness and serenity that seemed to abide in his presence. Never had I experienced anything like it. He thanked me, smiled, and tipping his hat, nodded slightly and strode off.

"Several days passed when one day just after sunrise the man next door appeared on our back porch and asked my grandmother if he might speak with me. He told me several rooms in his house were paneled in floor-to-ceiling knotty pine he intended to refinish and wondered if he might hire me to help him with the job. The feeling of serenity that seemed so captivating the first time we met faded as my mind shot forward to the overwhelming prospect of earning handfuls of money to blow on my car, buddies, girls, and good times.

"My grandmother, after assuring herself that the man was not stranger than my youthful naivete might realize, and understanding how much I missed an adult figure like my Uncle and the various adventures we had, gave approval for me to work for him. It turned out to be a wonderful summer, not because of the bucks or good times, but because of the insight, knowledge, and intoxicating sense of oneness the man-next-door seemed to possess. At first the man spoke little, listening mostly to my small talk and chit-chat, but as the summer wore on the subjects began to wax philosophical, eventually through him, turning to the Universe and man's place in the scheme of things...when and why, where and how, space and time...all of which was fairly heady stuff for a guy whose primary concern up to that time had been how large the size of a girl's chest was. In a peculiar, general sort of way he seemed to know everything about everything, and as we sanded, worked, reworked, and painted the wood, he talked and I listened. The most elaborate subjects were always described in the most graphic, mind-visual metaphors somehow easily understood on my level of comprehension. His inner soul seemed to breath and undulate with an understanding that penetrated my brain, painting my mind in brilliant splotches of color, running thick with an embryo of knowledge and dripping heavy with meaning...all done with the quiet flair of a person whose thirst had long been quenched and whose only real want, if there even was a want, was to occasionally sip now and then when the need arose.

"Toward the end of summer, several hours after we stopped work for the day, I discovered I had left my wallet at the man's house. I jumped the fence between the yards and bounded up the steps to the porch and through the door still open from the day's work. The man was sitting on a mat on the otherwise bare living room floor naked, that is, stark naked, in the soft twilight of the setting sun, crosslegged, Buddha-style, in front of a burning candle or incense (Digambara). He seemed as if in a trance and made no conscious effort to recognize my presence. I quietly retrieved my wallet and left.

"The next day, for the first time, I was reluctant to go to work. Arriving late, several hours passed with little conversation. I felt uncomfortable in the stunted quiet, like a kid who without anyone knowing it, had stumbled across his sister or mother in bed with his favorite uncle and didn't know how to handle the information.

"Mid morning came and went. Finally he motioned for a break. Mixing two ice teas, he handed me one, and putting his hand on my shoulder guided me outside to the porch where we sat in the shade on the cement floor, leaning our backs against the dusty white clapboard wall. His house was on the downside of the crest of a hill, somewhat higher than the surrounding area before us so the level of his porch was actually higher than the rooftops of the single dwelling houses across the street. From our vantage point we could see the whole basin outlined by the distant mountains to the north as they fingered their way downward toward the west where they intersected with the deep blue horizon of the Pacific and that of the cloudless pale blue sky. For the first time he spoke of himself.

To continue please go to the following URL: http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/awakening101/ZenEnlighten01.html