"Fire Monks: Zen Mind Meets Wildfire at the Gates of Tassajara"

One of the important teachings of Fire Monks: Zen Mind Meets Wildfire at the Gates of Tassajara is that there wasn't one Basin Complex Fire — but many fires.

In fact, just within a single person who experiences the fire, there are already many fires. This isn't just a matter of how we remember either.

For instance, watch and listen to Mako Voelkel's 16-second awe-filled observation of the fire on Flag Rock.

After 16 seconds of videotaping, Mako thought to herself, "I guess there's something else I should be doing now."

Click on the above image for a slideshow of events at Tassajara. This first photo is courtesy of Johan OstlundSo while Fire Monks tells the story of how "zen mind met wildfire at the gates of Tassajara," it actually tells both one story and many stories, about one fire and many fires, since the fire always changes — and our view always changes, too.

Trail to the Wind Caves, September 2008.Fire Monks is the opportunity to walk with others who met the fire. And so it is an opportunity to remember how you met the fire, too — and to recollect how you might want to meet it the next time it appears.

I don't know how well you know Tassajara. But by its end, Fire Monks becomes a book about neighborliness, too — what creates and what stresses it.

In other words, it implies a central question: what is the relationship between a monastery dedicated to a prescribed practice and the wider community outside the monastery's gates?

Suzuki-roshi's memorial, September 2008Or asked another way...to whom does Tassajara belong — and who belongs to it?

Tassajara CreekI know the answer for myself. Or I know my current answer.

The practice of Tassajara is a gift to the mountains-and-rivers in which we all live — just as the mountains-and-rivers in which we all live are already a gift to Tassajara. Tassajara is one of our many secret hearts.

As David Zimmerman, one of the monks who returned to Tassajara to meet the fire, says, "When you meet the fire, you meet yourself."

September 2008.We who live in these mountains understand that we will keep on meeting fire.

And the gift of living in these mountains is the particularly acute opportunity they give us for meeting ourselves as well.

                                       ________________________________

Notes

Colleen Morton Busch's Fire Monks: Zen Mind Meets Wildfire at the Gates of Tassajara has just been published — coinciding with the three-year anniversary of the Basin Complex Fire. Colleen weaves extensive interviews and research, together with her own experience as a Zen practitioner, into a vivid, first-hand account of the story/stories of how Tassajara met the Basin Fire. Like others I know who have read the book already, I couldn't put it down. It also provides helpful background — and raises pointed questions — about the "fog of war" and fire politics that still obscure our understanding of the Basin Complex Fire. Like Abbot Steve Stucky says, Colleen's endnotes deserve a close second reading on their own.

David Zimmerman, Colleen Morton Busch, and Mako Voelkl on the third anniversary of the Basin fire reaching Tassajara.Recently, too, "Here on Earth," from Wisconsin public radio, conducted an excellent interview with Colleen and Mako: "Zen and the Art of Firefighting."