Description: Spontaneously and extemporaneously created adventure, in which we ended up sauntering through Green Gulch Zen Farm
(Marty's Report):
I must say, it's been a bit since we had this adventure. Well, a quiet adventure. A Zen adventure. In which Heather bared her ass. But more on that later.
Heather was doing a class on finding her purpose in life, and was jazzed up upon returning to the city to leave the city again, or at least to go for a drive. I don't remember what I was doing earlier in the day, but the offer was well received, and off we went across the bridge.
Now, I hate the town of Mill Valley. To me, it's like one of those Bible Belt river towns in which the industry has abandoned the four generations of workers in favor of a third world country where the current President was an army colonel shortly before being being promoted to Commandant by the man he subsequently beheaded, leaving the remaining towns folk in a state of gritty depression that is tracking a spate of missing persons reports. Except with a lot of money and cafes. If I had a choice between hanging out with people who unpredictably, in the middle of a conversation about mid-century Italian pottery, jab bamboo shoots into your various orifices, and having a nice meal with the denizens of Mill Valley...well, it's like the Marin County version of a Yanni flute solo...in hell, going on forever and ever.
We did not stop in Mill Valley, but took the exit towards Stinson Beach. There was a certain sucking feeling as we passed by, but our car, Zippy, is fierce.
The area is heavy with Eucalyptus, a beautiful tree that snuck into the country before the strict post-9/11 immigration laws, and the turn off to Green Gulch is among these Eucalyptus groves. We drove carefully down the driveway, a one-and-a-quarter lane road. A retreat or sitting apparently was just finishing, so we had to creep past a lot of dour Zen students, while Heather waved jauntily. I know non-dour Zensters, so I'm not sure what was going on here. Maybe Zippy was intimidating their Priora (plural of Prius...look it up); he's an intimidating hunk of decade-old Subaru.
So, the place was pretty empty, the Subaru-afeared having fled, so we walked down the main road, back along the marriage route. We both had our respective memories of that foggy, rainy morning, when we arrived to get hitched. I had bought an armful of umbrellas on Clement, thinking we'd be in the garden. But they took pity on us and let us into the Zendo, a beautiful converted old barn. So we reminisced as we walked past the hall (I never noticed how short the buildings are there--apparently building codes or some such), and headed down the length of the land, a ravine or gulch that heads West towards the ocean. It's beautiful, strong land, with all the monastic buildings, and then the acres of gardens that provide produce for Greens in the city.
At the end of the property, you go through a high gate and there's the horse corral. We turned there and headed back.
And that's when it happened. Passing through this hallowed land, with her Theravadan-trained Buddhist husband, my sorta-Pagan wife commences to demonstrate some measure of pique by dropping her drawers and doing what in conventional society is known as "mooning." It doesn't seem to have a correlate in traditional monastic culture.
I was mortified. What if the Abbot had come out from the spinach sorting hut just then? Or some innocent new Buddhist convert, dew eyed with the Dharma, should rise from her tree-shaded cushion to see...well, it's a nice sight to me, but in context, a bit shocking.
However, as Heather, maybe a bit self-servingly, but correctly, pointed out, "This too is Spirit." So I allowed my vulgarian to give me an important lesson about attachment to the golden chains of decorum.
(Heather's Report):
Many people have said to us that our wedding was one of the most beautiful and touching ceremonies they have ever experienced and I say with some pride that's because Marty and I are uber. But I probably would more point to where we got married, at this amazing and sacred place called Green Gulch Farm, otherwise known as Green Dragon Temple, a Buddhist zendo and spiritual meditation retreat under the Soto Zen tradition (and part of the San Francisco Zen Center). Also, bonusly located in the absolutely stunning, painfully beautiful valley by Stinson Beach and lower Mount Tam.
You can't go wrong with having a wedding in the beautiful, lush, green (and organic) gardens of Green Gulch, except that it ended up pouring rain, albeit this turning the area soft with fog and that sort of lovely rainy day I remember at the monastery of Dai Bosatsu with great affection (to the left). No newts though and that was disappointing. But the upside was that the Buddhists took pity upon us and allowed us to have the wedding in the zendo itself (generally only set aside for the practitioners of Soto Zen, my husband being... Captain Vipassana and my father, performing the ceremony, being of the Rinzai tradition). But that was amazing and worked out perfectly. I think all of our guests could feel the specialness of the place and in the ten minutes of silence/sitting meditation we had planned, there came the feeling among the space Quakers call a "joined meeting", when the energy of all involved seems to synch together in a most palpable way. It was pretty cool.So needless to say, we were happy to remember such an auspicious day and I hope sets the tone for how special this sacred space is. THAT BEING SAID... No one was hurt by the exposure of my ghoulishly white ass cheeks. The Abbot did not see my ass. The Roshi did not see my ass. No silly dew-eyed dharma creature, human or animal alike, saw my ass. You know why? Because I checked before performing said act. I looked around before dropping my trousers.
I don't even remember what I was irritated at my husband for, but I'm sure he deserved such a sacred mooning.
