THE DHARMA AT BIG SUR

Tucked away in a remote valley close to the Los Padres National Forest in central California sits the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center which had been established in 1967,  just a few years before Bobby's first pilgrimage to Big Sur in 69.

Thirty years later the young surfer had gone from chasing a vague spiritual intuition from beach to beach to becoming a fully ordained Buddhist monk who trained disciples of all ages and backgrounds at the same center he'd trained at. His journey hadn't surprised his friends and family who had all recognised he had a seeking instinct from his teenage years beachcombing washed up artefacts, to his interest in talking with random people and engaging in deep conversations about space, time and the universe.

But something happened to Bobby in the early 70's, a defining realisation that his innocent desire to find answers in the spiritual realm had been distorted by his overuse of drugs, dancing to his generation's soundtrack of madness. It wasn't that he had become pious as he'd got older, more that he was desperate to get to the pure source of what many Buddhists refer to as ultimate view.

Now he had ultimate view with the ultimate views of nature surrounding him he was more resolved than at any stage of his life. It had been as if all the  metaphorical springs, streams and rivers of his childhood and early adult life had finally led him to this - the vast ocean of emptiness - liberation from the tyranny of reality that his parents, sister and friends had so inevitably succumbed to.

"What have you found up there all hidden away from the world?" his sister would often ask him when they saw each other at family holidays.

"Peace."

His sister felt this was too simplistic an answer to what she considered her nuanced enquiry. She suspected that perhaps it was too difficult for him to express to her the essence of his life as a monk and so gave her the easiest answer he felt she could understand.

"Maybe you're just avoiding reality?" she said to him one Christmas.

Bobby smiled and replied gently.

"We're all avoiding reality. At least the ultimate reality."

Even though he could appear permanently coy and cryptic about his spiritual life, Jessica knew that her brother loved her. She could feel it when she was with him. And if she didn't quite fully understand the nature of his mission in life then that was okay. He probably didn't understand hers either.

But what she perhaps didn't know was the deep consideration that Bobby would invest during his meditations in the forest where everyone he had ever met - family, friends, lovers, strangers - would present themselves as a clear image in his mind. Through his daily spiritual practice he had managed to re-acquaint himself with everyone he had ever encountered throughout his life, even the demons.  

One August evening in 1999, Patricia's image appeared before him and as he now imagined her an old lady (possibly even dead) he felt a twinge of sadness that she, like him, had also been seeking something beyond reality back in the late 60's. What was it that changed her mind that day at the beach? A sense of fear that the further away she got from her old life, the harder it would be to return to it? Perhaps. Of course this was all speculation now.

It would have been easy to think of what they briefly shared as just a superficial moment in time, but looking back, Bobby felt strongly it was more than that. She had seen something in him, something that even he hadn't entirely seen in himself at that stage. Of course, everyone was big on freedom back then and searching for the ultimate expression of it. He thought it was surfing. In a way it was. But in a way it wasn't. He needed to contextualise the intuition he had his mind into something that made sense. Discovering the Dharma was the answer for him and sequestered in nature, reflecting on his life's journey and all those who had played their part in it, he felt a deep sense of gratitude.

The end of summer always prompted deep feelings in Bobby and having reflected on that strange August of 69 he decided to return to the beach where he first encountered Big Sur, a place that eventually led him to Tassajara many years later.

Now, as an older man, he stood on the same cliffs above Willow Creek where he first met Charlie and wondered if that brief dance with insanity had made a more significant impression on him that he realised at the time.

But Manson was unbridled chaos, mired in duality and what Bobby found now was order - order through realising the nature of chaos.

As he watched some young surfers down on the beach venturing out to the ocean on their boards, he saw a reflection of his younger self and smiled.

This ageing surfer boy had now become everything.

Everything and nothing.