Fire Monks Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  One - LIGHTNING STRIKES

  Two - FIRES MERGE

  Three - THE THREE-DAY-AWAY FIRE

  Four - IN THE SHADOW OF ESPERANZA

  Five - GREAT FAITH, GREAT DOUBT, GREAT EFFORT

  Six - FIRE IN THE CONFLUENCE

  Seven - BUDDHA IN THE BOCCE BALL COURT

  Eight - THE LAST EVACUATION

  Nine - NO LEAVING, NO GOING BACK

  Ten - RING OF FLAME

  Eleven - MEETING FIRE

  Twelve - UNBURYING BUDDHA

  AFTERWORD

  Acknowledgements

  NOTES

  THE PENGUIN PRESS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. • Penguin Group (Canada),

  90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) •

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green,

  Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell,

  Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd,

  11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale,

  Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd,

  24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in 2011 by The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Colleen Morton Busch, 2011 All rights reserved

  Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following copyrighted works:

  Excerpt from “Genjo Koan” by Eihei Dogen, translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Robert Aitken. Used by permission

  of the San Francisco Zen Center; Selection by Norman Fischer. Used by permission of Norman Fischer; Excerpt from Deep

  Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales. Copyright © 2003 by Laurence Gonzales. Used by permission

  of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.; Excerpt from You Have to Say Something by Dainin Katagiri. © 1998 by Dainin Katagiri.

  , Boston, Mass.; Excerpt from Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean.

  By permission of University of Chicago Press; Excerpt from “How Plants Use Fire (And Are Used by It)” by Stephen Pyne

  from the companion Web site to the film Fire Wars, NOVA (WGBH). By permission of the author and WGBH; Excerpt from

  “Control Burn” from Turtle Island by Gary Snyder. Copyright © 1974 by Gary Snyder. ; Excerpt from The Practice of the Wild by Gary Snyder. Copyright © 1990 by Gary Snyder.

  Used by permission of Steve Stücky; Excerpt from

  Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki. Protected underterms of the International Copyright Union. Reprinted

  by permission of Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston, Mass.; Excerpt from The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea.

  Published by Little, Brown and Company.

  Photograph credits:

  Page 1: top © Shundo David Haye, bottom © Johan Ostlund; Page 2: top © Shundo David Haye, bottom © Daniel J. Quinn; Page 3: top © Shundo David Haye, bottom Copyright © 2008 The Monterey County Herald. A ll rights reserved. Reprinted with Permission; Page 4: top © Shundo David Haye, bottom © David Zimmerman; Page 5: top © Ivan J. Iberle, bottom © Mako Voelkel; Page 6:top © Mako Voelkel, bottom © Tom Meyer; Page 7: top © Simon Moyes, bottom © Colleen Morton Busch; Page 8: top © Mako Voelkel, bottom © Daniel J. Quinn

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Busch, Colleen Morton.

  Fire monks : Zen mind meets wildfire at the gates of Tassajara / Colleen Morton Busch.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-51694-2

  1. Fire fighters—California. 2. Wildfires—Prevention and control—California. 3. Zen Buddhism—Social aspects.

  4. Zen Buddhists—California—Biography. 5. Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. I. Title.

  HD8039.F52C35 2011

  363.3709794’76—dc22 2011010226

  Maps by Meighan Cavanaugh

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For John,

  gatekeeper, gate crasher, holder of the keys

  Fire is more than an ecological process or an environmental problem. It is a relationship.

  —STEPHEN J. PYNE, fire historian

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Tassajara Monks

  STEVE STÜCKY—San Francisco Zen Center abbot

  Dharma name: Daitsu Myōgen, Greatly Pervading, Subtle Eye

  DAVID ZIMMERMAN—director

  Kansan Tetsuhō, Perfection Mountain, Complete Surrender

  MAKO VOELKEL—head cook

  Unzan Doshin, Cloud Mountain, Path of the Heart

  GRAHAM ROSS—plant manager

  Unzan Etsudo, Cloud Mountain, Joyful Way

  COLIN GIPSON—head of shop

  Shikan Zenka, Determined to See, Completely Burned

  SHUNDO DAVID HAYE—former resident, fire scout

  Shundo Gennin, Way of the Fleet Steed, Manifesting Virtue

  DEVIN PATEL—student fire marshal

  Kakusei Yushin, Jewel Stillness, Fearless Heart

  LESLIE JAMES—senior practice leader, Jamesburg resident

  Sho Sai So Kan, Settle/Finish, Encourage, Original Mirror

  JANE HIRSHFIELD—former resident, poet

  So Kai Un Go, Source Servant, Cloud Abode

  Firefighters

  STUART CARLSON—CAL FIRE station captain, Soquel Station, Santa

  Cruz County

  JACK FROGGATT—Kern County Fire Department battalion chief

  Basin Complex fire branch director

  GEORGE HAINES—CAL FIRE unit chief, San Benito–Monterey Unit

  PROLOGUE

  On June 21, 2008, lightning strikes from one end of drought-dry California to the other ignited more than two thousand wildfires in what became known as the “lightning siege.” The fires stretched from the Trinity Alps in the north to Santa Barbara in the south. One of the blazes turned toward Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, in the Ventana Wilderness near Big Sur. For weeks the resident monks prepared for the fire’s arrival, committed to staying to defend the monastery despite repeated orders to leave.

  If you lived on the West Coast, you knew about the fires. If you lived in California, you smelled the smoke. The situation at Tassajara was featured in the national news. Connections to the monastery, famous for its hot springs, food, and peaceful environs, extend around the world. Even those who’d never been to Tassajara or heard of it before were intrigued by the seemingly paradoxical image of a
fire monk. Suddenly, people who ordinarily spent a good deal of time sitting cross-legged in front of a wall faced a situation that required decisive action. What did that look like? And how could sitting still and doing nothing prepare you to act, and to act fast?

  As a Zen student and regular visitor to Tassajara over the past ten years, I followed the fire closely. On the day it swept through the monastery, I was camping in Oregon, outside the band of smoke drifting north from California. As soon as I read Tassajara director David Zimmerman’s account of the fire’s arrival, I wanted to tell this story—from as close in as possible, but also with a wide lens. What was it like to meet a wildfire with minimal training in firefighting but years of Zen practice to guide you? I believed others might benefit from knowing, the fire being a perfect metaphor for anything that comes uninvited and threatens to hurt us or the people and places we love.

  The word Zen is often used as a catchall synonym for paradox, simultaneously evoking the simple and the unfathomable. In Fire Monks, I wanted to portray Zen in all of its true complexity and relevance, as a continuous practice, a way of life that cultivates a particular kind of fearlessness whether or not there’s a wildfire at the gate.

  To write the book, I relied on official reports and logs, news coverage, written accounts and public talks, the Sitting with Fire blog created during the lead-up to the fire’s arrival, and my own interviews—more than one hundred taped hours—with residents of Tassajara. I used first names in the pages that follow to distinguish the story’s main characters; for practical reasons, many people I spoke with are named not in the body of the story but in the endnotes.

  Over a period of two years after the fire, I made many trips to Tassajara, some during the summer guest season, others during the closed fall and winter training periods. Tassajara during a practice period and Tassajara during guest season are two sides of the same coin. Practice is always happening there—even in the summer months when there are guests who may have come simply for the hot springs and lavish vegetarian food—but it can look quite different depending on the season.

  In a formal training period, practice looks like this: a wake-up bell at three fifty a.m., six periods of meditation, from forty minutes to an hour in length, interspersed with periods of work and study and occasional lectures. Simple meals are eaten in the zendo (meditation hall) at one’s seat, in three bowls, nested and wrapped in cloths when not in use. There is about an hour and a half in the late afternoon for exercise and bathing. The day ends around nine p.m. after the last period of zazen, or meditation. On designated workdays and personal days, the schedule is slightly more forgiving.

  In the summer guest season, a student runs up and down the paths at Tassajara swinging the wake-up bell and calling the resident community to meditation a full hour and a half later, at five fifteen a.m. The summer community consists of both long-term, year-round residents and summer “work practice” students often new to Zen. Though the zazen schedule is much lighter, the community works for most of each day to take care of Tassajara and its guests, mostly in silence. Whether it’s tending to the altars, serving meals, or washing dishes, this work is considered an essential part of practice—not separate from the practice of meditation.

  My first trip to Tassajara for Fire Monks took place during the winter practice period in November 2008, four months after the fire. David greeted me at the gate. When I commented on the smoky smell still in the air and the paths littered with leaves, he said, “That’s Tassajara in the fall.” I’d been there only during the summer, for “guest practice”—meditating and working with the community in the morning, relaxing as a guest in the afternoon.

  During the book’s writing, I witnessed Tassajara’s recovery. Wildflowers bloomed on barren hillsides. Grasses sprouted, ferns unfurled, bright green shoots broke through the soil at the bases of charred tree trunks. The road became an obstacle course of potholes, runoff, rockfalls, and downed trees, until the county rehabilitated and graded it. New buildings gradually replaced burned ones. A community tested by a crisis continued to practice together and to examine their experience for whatever truths it might hold. Memories faded and then reappeared when I asked questions or when smoke hovered over the valley from a new wildfire in the distance.

  At Tassajara, fire burned around some things and straight through others, in a course that might seem haphazard but was determined mostly by wind, relative humidity, topography. Similarly, the fire burned uniquely in each person. There wasn’t one fire, but many. There was a shared fire—the event Tassajara’s residents and friends experienced as a community—and the fires individuals lived through in the valleys of their own hearts.

  When wildfire first threatened Tassajara, the question arose: Even if every building burned down to its foundation, wouldn’t Tassajara survive? It’s not the buildings that make Tassajara what it is. So, what does? What is Tassajara? It’s a question that can’t be fully met with words.

  One of the monks who fought the fire observed in an interview: “The Tassajara that was here before the fire is not here anymore.” But a smile tugged at the corners of his lips even before the next question came: What is here?

  He paused, then answered, “Tassajara.”

  One

  LIGHTNING STRIKES

  To know the spirit of the place is to realize that you are a part of a part and that the whole is made of parts, each of which is whole. You start with the part you are whole in.

  —GARY SNYDER, The Practice of the Wild

  Saturday, June 21, 2008, one p.m.

  Fire season had started early, in May, when people typically start dusting off barbecues and dreaming of long summer days. The Indians fire was one of those early-season blazes, ignited when a heat wave followed the driest spring on record in California. Weather staff for the Indians fire first spotted the lightning strikes several hundred miles off the Pacific Coast on the evening of June 20. Usually storms swept into the Big Sur area from the southeast. They often came with rain. But this one appeared seemingly out of nowhere, and it looked as though it might run all the way up to the northern edge of the state. By the morning of June 21, commanders had stripped resources from the Indians fire to assign to the lightning-ignited fires before those fires even started.

  At one p.m. on June 21, David Zimmerman finished his gazpacho—a cooling summer tomato soup, crisp with cucumbers—and set aside his bowl. He picked up the phone and dialed the number for the Indians fire public information line. The drum had already sounded for work circle. He would be late, if he made it at all, but he wanted to get the latest official update on the wildfire burning through the wilderness five miles south (as the crow flies) of Tassajara.

  Tassajara sits deep in the Ventana Wilderness, inside the boundary of the Los Padres National Forest, in rugged country designed to burn. At times, the satellite phone connection could sound as if you were placing a call to a Himalayan peak just to reach Salinas forty-six miles north. Today the connection with forest headquarters in Goleta was surprisingly clear. One of the fire info techs staffing the line answered—a friendly female voice David recognized. She reported that the fire had burned 51,125 acres as of six a.m. that morning, southeast of Tassajara. Northeasterly winds were blowing it away from the monastery.

  The Indians fire had started with a runaway campfire on June 8. It was now June 21, the summer solstice. As Tassajara director, David had called the info line several times a day for nearly two weeks to check the status of the fire. He didn’t have a personal phone, so he used the phone on the back porch or in the stone office. He’d put signs up around Tassajara for the guests, explaining the smoke. He’d noted that the fire was moving away from Tassajara, that staff were monitoring the situation closely and were in contact with fire officials, and that they had plans in place should evacuation become necessary.

  He wasn’t particularly worried. Other than the smoke, it was summer business as usual. The guest season had been open since early May. A dozen retreats for summ
er guests had come and gone. The various crews staffed by students—kitchen, dining room, bag lunch, cabin, garden, shop, dish shack—had worked out any kinks and settled into the schedule. Part of David’s job was to coordinate the constant in-and-out flow of summer students and consult with crew heads to ensure that things ran smoothly. It could be tedious at times. Following the movements of the fire was new and engaging, like traveling abroad and learning to speak the local language.

  David thanked the woman for the update. He cradled the receiver and stood up. Just then, the sky exploded. One loud whip-crack to the earth and then, a moment later, another. A brief downpour thrummed the roof, slapping sycamore leaves and splashing on the surface of the creek.

  He’d seen the heavy gray clouds gathering overhead on his way to lunch. He’d thought they might get a little rain—rare in the summer, but not unheard of, and welcome, considering the lingering drought. But lightning? Thunder?

  David could feel the expansion of heated air, smell the clouds giving up their condensation. He loved thunderstorms. Summer afternoon squalls tossed long shadows across Pennsylvania’s green fields when he was a boy. But this storm stopped as suddenly as it started. The clouds closed up, and two strands of thought came together in David’s mind: The drought-dry earth. And now lightning, like a match to the wilderness.

  In David’s life, there had been many match-strike moments like this, when everything changed, suddenly and drastically. Six months after his call on June 21 to the Indians fire information line, he sat in the library at San Francisco Zen Center, where he’d first learned to practice. Looking like someone more suited to wandering the halls of a library or museum than to holding a fire hose, David let his tea cool as he described how he came to be at Tassajara. Dark, well-defined eyebrows framed his round face. He answered my questions about his background with a determined precision to his speech yet an open focus to his gaze, suggesting that his past is no longer where he lives.