Punk Monk Meditation

A while back, I listened to an interview with Fleet Maull where he talks about "plunge experiences." One of the plunge experiences he was talking about was something called a "Street Retreat," in which the practitioner goes on retreat as a homeless person on the streets of a big city. These Street Retreats are put on by Bernie Glassman and the Zen Peacemakers. They also lead a retreat in Auschwitz where they sit by the train tracks and help heal the land of it's violent past.

I must admit, the street retreat didn't sound so tempting. But, I did my mini-version for an hour or two today. i shaved into the crazy mohawk ensemble you see in the picture, put on an army style jacket, and then did my walking meditation through Golden Gate Park and Ocean Beach. I can't say I really learned much from the experience, though it's always interesting to notice how much our physical appearance affects our self-image as well as the image others hold of us. I hope I didn't scare anyone.

I saw one man picking up bottles for recycling and eating some crumbs from someone's thrown out bag of chips. I felt a little twinge of sadness that for me it's just an "experiment," but for someone else it may be a world beyond their design.

Coming back, I decided to look into this Punk Monk thing more and found the website of San Francisco's official Punk Monk - an episcopal friar! Cool.

There's also a group called the Dharma Punx. Although it looks cool, I don't know much about it. There was one guy at a retreat up in North Fork who was part of the Dharma Punx who had a "Meditate and Destroy" sweatshirt on during the retreat. Arggg! Rar! yeah.

Don't worry, though. I shaved it all off after my little experiment, and now I'm just an ordinary bald guy - ready for my trip to the Monastery in a couple weeks.

Such vanity from nothing
But a spirit; a hungry ghost who feeds upon our sighs, swallows up the echo of our wailing days – we, whose withered hearts grow plaintive, now wandering as a flock of birds.
- The Punk Monk