Solid.  Like a rock.

That sounds good, doesn’t it?  Safe, secure, stable, predictable.

We like predictable.  More than that, we like certainty.  We want to know that things are solid and unchanging.

But that’s never the case, is it?

Very little is certain.  And everything changes. Constantly.  The weather.  The stock market. Our jobs. Our finances. Our relationships. Our fitness. Our health.

The old adage is that the only certainties are “death and taxes.” And the Buddha taught that the only certainties are sickness, old age and death.

It is the clinging to certainty – the clinging to what we think should be certain, the clinging to how we think things should be – that causes suffering.  But how difficult it is not to cling.

Charlotte Joko Beck in her excellent book Nothing Special says this:

“We are rather like whirlpools in the river of life.  In flowing forward, a river or a stream may hit rocks, branches or irregularities in the ground, causing whirlpools to spring up spontaneously here and there.  Water entering one whirlpool quickly passes through and rejoins the river, eventually joining another whirlpool and moving on.  Though for short periods it seems to be distinguishable as a separate event, the water in the whirlpool is just the river itself.  The stability of the whirlpool is only temporary.  The energy of the river of life forms living things – a human being, a cat or dog, trees and plants – then what held the whirlpool in place is itself altered, and the whirlpool is swept away, reentering the larger flow.”

Everything changes. Nothing is solid like a rock.

Joko Beck goes on to say that in clinging – in making proprietary – our own little whirlpools as if they were something of our own, some permanent fixture, we get clogged up, we stagnate. “A whirlpool that puts up a dam around itself and shuts itself off from the river becomes stagnant and loses its vitality,” she say.

It is in the letting go that we create life.  What a paradox.

We have these ideas of how we should be, of how others should be, of how life should be, of how it all ought to unfold.

The challenge is not to get caught up creating these illusory boundaries around our own little whirlpools – our own little concepts and constructs – as if they were something stable and permanent; and instead to allow the flow as part of the river of life.

Pema Chodron writes, “That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and impermanent, is the first mark of existence. It is the ordinary state of affairs. Everything is in process. Everything – every tree, every blade of grass, all the animals, insects, human beings, buildings, the animate and the inanimate—is always changing, moment to moment.”

The first noble truth, she says, is to recognize that we also change like the weather, we ebb and flow like the tides, we wax and wane like the moon.

How hard it is to allow the ebb and flow.  How hard it is to know that we are the river.

The image is of Split Rock on the Boot Spur ridge.  Even what looks solid isn’t.

Perspective is necessary.

Ann and I were in Ireland last week.  We stayed in a beautiful idyllic cottage overlooking the North Atlantic. A place where the quiet sank into our bones.

We did nothing. Well, that’s not exactly true. We got up late; we took long runs along the Coast Road; we made love; we drank wine and ate cheese; and we frequented the Guinness in more than a few pubs.  But mostly we lay in the grass… and read books.  And did nothing.

We got a chance to step back from the fray.  You know the fray:  the work deadlines, the unanswered emails, the unpaid bills, the house chores, the kid chores, the crazy, unceasing demands we face each and every day.

“Can’t see the forest for the trees,” is the old saying.  And it’s true.  When we get in the thick of it, it’s hard to see the big picture. We get lost.

Which is why it’s good to step back from time to time.  To gain perspective.

It’s one of the reasons we climb big hills.  One can see a lot from up high.  George Mallory was asked once why he climbed mountains.  He said, “Because they’re there.”  But Rene Daumal in the novel Mount Analogue said it better:

“You cannot stay on the summit forever.  You have to come down again… So why bother in the first place? Just this: what is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs and one sees; one descends and one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.”

It’s hard “to know” without the time to gain perspective.  All of the great spiritual leaders through the ages have taken time out to get it: Moses, the Desert Fathers, Jesus, Mohammed, the Buddha.  We need it too.

Time out. The desert experience. The view from the top of the hill.

There is a retreat center nearby.  It publishes a newsletter called “Retreat Forward.” Isn’t that a great title? Retreat is necessary to move forward.

Taking the time to step back is restorative. It renews our spirits, our minds, our souls.  It allows us to lighten our load… and our step. We’re less lost.  We move back into the fray more thoughtfully, more deliberately, with more peace.

It allows us to see. And to know.

The image is from Toe Head along the Coast Road in West Cork, high above the North Atlantic.

“Many people come, looking, looking, taking picture…No good…Some people come, see. Good!”
– from a Sherpa near Mount Everest, as recounted by Galen Rowell.

Oh say, can you see?

This is not a riddle.

Question:  How do you catch a monkey?

Answer: The same way we get caught ourselves.

Catching a monkey is fairly easy.  Find a coconut and go to the jungle where monkeys live.  Cut a small hole in one end of the coconut  so that a monkey can just slide its hand in. Fill the coconut with fruit. Tether the other end of the coconut  to a stake driven in the ground.

Now here’s the cool part:  a monkey will come along and, smelling the fruit,  stick its hand into the hole in the coconut.  When the monkey closes its fist around the fruit, it won’t be able to pull its arm free from the coconut. Voila, it’s caught!  Go get your monkey and take it home.

Of course if the monkey gave any thought to this, it would realize that it isn’t really caught at all.  All it has to do is release its grasp and slide its hand out of the coconut. And run free.

But, you see, monkeys like their fruit.  Once they get their hands around some, they’re not about to let go.  Even if it means freedom.

Sometimes holding on is a good thing – like when the drop below is a couple thousand feet.

But most of the time refusing to let go leaves us caught – like monkeys.

The image was made by my friend and fellow photographer Matt Stauble in Tanzania while we were on safari together.  Check out his website at Matt Stauble Photo.

Avoid being a monkey.

The young woman behind the information desk was perhaps 20.  “Could you tell me where the Boot Spur Trail intersects with the Tuck Trail?” I inquired.  

She cocked her head to one side and asked, “Do you have a map?”  

“No,” I replied.  “I just want to refresh my recollection as to where the trails intersect.” 

“You should really have a map, sir,” she said.  “Sir,” I quickly discerned, was code for “you look old and stupid.”

Knowing where to go can be a challenge.  

Some routes are clear.

Some routes are not.

Some are marked with cairns.

Some are marked with signs.

Some routes go up.

Some go down.

Finding our way is pretty important. In the mountains. And in life.

But even when you’ve found the route, it isn’t always easy to stay on it.

Sometimes we have to feel our way along.  Sometimes we have to stop. Sometimes we go the wrong way and we have to turn around and go back. Oftentimes, we need help.

I am fond of saying that if it seems too difficult, we’re probably off route.  Ann is quick to remind me that sometimes a difficult route is just that:  difficult.  Being able to tell the difference often feels impossible.

Which path is the “right” path?

Maps can help.  The stories of those wise thinkers who have gone before us too.

Abraham Lincoln said, “The best way to predict your future is to create it.”  The best path is the one we chose ourselves.

Don Juan told Carlos Castaneda this:

“Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary.  Then ask yourself and yourself alone one question.  This question is one that only a very old man asks.  My benefactor told me about it once when I was young and my blood was too vigorous for me to understand it.  Now I do understand it.  I will tell you what it is:  Does this path have a heart?  If it does, the path is good. If it doesn’t, it is of no use.”

When thinking about paths, I am often reminded of Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken:

               Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
               and sorry I could not travel both
               And be one traveller, long I stood
               and looked down one as far as I could
               to where it bent in the undergrowth;

               Then took the other, as just as fair,
               and having perhaps the better claim
               because it was grassy and wanted wear;
               though as for that, the passing there
               had worn them really about the same,

               And both that morning equally lay
               in leaves no feet had trodden black.
               Oh, I kept the first for another day!
               Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
               I doubted if I should ever come back.

               I shall be telling this with a sigh
               Somewhere ages and ages hence:
               Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
               I took the one less travelled by,
               and that has made all the difference.  

Fortunately there are many routes.  There is no “right path.”  The only true path is the one that is our own – even when we’re feeling old and stupid.

As climbers and adventurers, we could do a whole lot more for the places and the peoples that we love.

This past Sunday’s New York Times carried an excellent Op-Ed piece by Thomas Friedman on the devolving quagmire that is Afghanistan.  In the same section, Nicholas Kristof wrote a piece called The Afghanistan Abyss.  Both authors shared the view that we have a fundamental misunderstanding of the tribal dynamics in Afghanistan and how those dynamics play out in the presence of  an occupying force. “More troops, more blood, more chaos,” believes Kristof. “Frankly, if a bunch of foreign Muslim troops in turbans showed up in my home-town in rural Oregon, searching our homes without bringing any obvious benefit [such as education, agricultural development and infrastructure], then we might all take to the hills with our deer rifles as well,” he said.

In the book review section of the very same issue of the Times, Greg Mortenson’s incredibly inspiring memoir, Three Cups of Tea, is listed as a best seller for the 134th week.  As many of us know, Mortenson was a climber who, although he failed miserably in a climbing attempt on K2, fell in love with that far off place where the mountains grow so big. But instead of leaving with his memories and his photographs, he decided to give back to the place.  He founded a non-profit foundation and  built dozens of schools for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Through education and awareness, he seeks to end tribal repression and the need for more troops, blood and chaos.

Mortenson’s book is beautifully written.  It’s a great “story.” And it is easy to read it just as a “story.”  But the suffering of which both Friedman and Kristof write is real. Can we connect with both the story and the reality? Is there something we can actually   “do?”

Afghanistan was this past week’s headline.  But we don’t need to look far beyond our own footprints to find other places that could use our help as well.

Ann and I had the great privilege of listening to Geoffrey Tabin speak at an American Alpine Club dinner a number of years ago.  Tabin, an ophthalmologist, climbed Everest. Like Mortenson, he fell in love with the beauty of the place.   As he travelled through the region, he saw countless cases of preventable corneal blindness. Returning to Nepal year after year, he single-handedly treated thousands of these cases restoring sight to those who could no longer see the majesty of the mountains that surrounded them let alone the faces of those they love.

Sir Edmund Hillary too.  For years after his historic first, he returned to the Sherpa people founding schools and hospitals, lifting countless numbers out of poverty and ignorance and disease.

None of us need be a Mortenson or Tabin or Hillary.  But perhaps we could connect a little better.  I so admire my friends Andy and Bob who participate in the Israel bike ride for the benefit of the Arava Institute. Arava is “the premier environmental education and research program in the Middle East, preparing future Arab and Jewish leaders to cooperatively solve the region’s environmental challenges.”  The goal is to build networks and develop understanding that will enable future cooperative work and activism in the Middle East and beyond. Andy and Bob love the place where their roots run deep.  They give back.

In this time of economic crisis, it is so easy to circle the wagons around our own little compounds.  But we cannot forget to look outward.  Whether through tangible actions or through the support of those who take those actions, we can connect with those in need.

Charles Houston was another climber who “failed” on K2.  In his retreat from the peak, his team fell on a steep icy slope.  Tied to his fellow climbers, Houston and his partner Pete Schoening miraculously arrested the fall and saved their comrades. Houston, also a physician, went on to give back to many over his 91 year life.  But he is perhaps best known in climbing circles for his role in that dramatic improbable rescue.  His biography is called The Brotherhood of the Rope.

We are all tied together.  Climbers and adventurers and explorers and those who don’t wander far from their tribal homes.

I want to do better at remembering the connection.

The Brotherhood of The Rope.  We depend on it.