Rugged Interdependency - Amaravati Buddhist Monastery

Golden Highways Revisited: 1998or wrong in what he did? How can the heart hold that dilemma? Was he a goodman or a bad man?In welcoming such paradoxes into the heart we find that there is no need totake fixed rational positions with regard to them. In fact the act of welcoming isthe agent via which a way forward opens up. Contradiction is to be embraced, notwiped out through opinion or belief or data. For, ironically, it’s through embracingthem that all paradoxes and contradictions are resolved.This means that we don’t necessarily have to come to some logically unassailableconclusion about the rights and wrongs of needle-exchange, or get tangled ina briar patch of conflicting moral certainties. We just need the presence of mind torestrain our reactivities, to open the heart to those in need and to respond as theheart guides us moment by moment. The theories and idealisms can happily be leftto gather dust somewhere in the store shed.The talk seemed to be very well-received and Geraldine Rose, our friendlylawyer, was glowing brightly at the end – she even forgave my not-so-subtle digsat the Catholic Church and the use of the lawyers as symbolic of the voices of thedoubting mind.Vince and Sunshine Taylor, and Anagarika Michael arrived late in the afternoonand, once all the good-byes were done, we headed south to Sonoma MountainZen Center. We had been invited to give their regular Saturday morning talk andso we traveled there the night before to meet people and settle in a little. The drivewas in bright sun, after our numerous El Niño year showers and the roads wereclear and open.•East of Santa Rosa, a large town 60 miles north of San Francisco, there is a longsuccession of rolling hills and soft fertile valleys. This is wine and horse country –broad meadows, still green from the spring rains, thick trees and plush houses ofthe haves. Vineyards patch the landscape and the steeper hillsides are dark withdense oak forests.We climb and climb to the top of Sonoma Mountain and emerge from the carto be greeted by Margaret – a long-term resident student. Kwong Roshi has beenliving here since 1973 but most of the others are newcomers. He is a Dharma heirof Suzuki Roshi and set up Sonoma Mountain Zen Center after his teacher passedaway. We had met once before, in Dharamsala at the first conference of WesternBuddhist teachers with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. We had never communicatedvery much but, since we were such close neighbors, relatively speaking, it had beenmy intention to visit here many times; it was only with Vince having taken the initiativethat this occasion had finally come about.Although this center and the collective of San Francisco Zen Center/Tassajara/Green Gulch share a common spiritual ancestor in the person of Suzuki Roshi,Sonoma Mountain has maintained an independence from the others since itsinception. It is not at all uncommon for the Dharma heirs of a single teacher to72