Burton Bradley
SOS: In Search of the Sacred
It is called Noavosse, "The Good Mountain," by the Cheyenne and Mato Paha, "Bear
Mountain" by the Sioux. And Bear Butte by the United States Department of the
Interior. A sign at the base of the mountain reads,
"Here through the centuries the Plains Indians received spiritual guidance from the creator.
Here the Cheyenne prophet, Sweet Medicine, received the four sacred arrows, the four commandments and a moral code.
Here the Sioux worshiped Wankan Tanka and paid tribute to the Spiritual Ruler."
And here, I found myself before dawn on the day after summer solstice, a man
who had spent the first half of his life living at thirty-two feet above sea
level with little knowledge of mountains and less knowledge of the sacred, ready
to ascend.
I've come to know mountains better after first living in the Sierra Nevadas
and now for the past twelve years in the Big Horn Basin surrounded by the Big
Horns to the east, the Absarokas to the south and west, the Beartooths and Pryors
to the northwest and north. Yet, I'm still a novice when it comes to the sacred.
Mato Paha, Bear Butte is a place of prayer and centering that is not just solitude
but a meditative, vital space. It is not a place to merely relax or camp out.
It is not a place for fun, but an environment in which to experience that rarest
of human feelings: rapture. It is a sensual place, too, in the visionary sense
of fully listening, seeing, experiencing with one's entire being. "Things" are
to be experienced differently than what one experiences of life from one's front
window or favorite fishing hole.
And what is it exactly that one perceives? Or, to phrase the question more accurately,
not what, but how does one experience a difference, an intensification of one's
senses, of one's thoughts about the nature of things, about one's life in the
deepest sense?
Standing at the base of Bear Butte, I thought about Black Elk, the Oglala Sioux
holy man, who over a century earlier on a mountain top fifty miles to the south
had his great vision of the world:
"And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than
I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit,
and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being."
Visions by definition are an inquiry into the larger questions, beliefs, and
ideas in life with regard to one's way of being in the world, one's direction,
one's knowledge, one's relationship to others and to the whole overall. Not
that the little, everyday life is ignored but it is to be seen through a wider
lens, in a sacred manner.
You can photograph the mountain from the parking lot; you can camp out at Bear
Butte Lake two miles away. But to experience the sacredness of the place you
need to climb. I decided to walk up just before sunrise. It was a pristine summer
morning and my mood had already been enhanced by the lingering atmosphere of
religious ceremonies conducted the previous four days as part of a summer solstice
celebration.
I was allowed to stay in the empty camp at the base of the mountain. I pitched
my tent among abandoned sweat lodges and communal fire pits with various "altars"
of stones, feathers, and prayer cloths--not to mention the campsite of an old
Lakota man, who sang around midnight accompanied by a drum.
I spent the night by a fire, listening to him talking to some friends, low,
good friend talk, barely audible, no louder than the occasional bird whistle,
the loon clarinet in the distance, the murmuring creek, the slight breeze whispering
through the trees.
So the hike itself was charged before I took my first step. I was a mixture
of eagerness and slight apprehension. Should I? Am I worthy? Can I do this right?
Friend Jenny's gift of prayer tobacco was right and insurance--for or against
what I wasn't sure. The sun slowly appeared, first as a mere lightening of the
far sky and then on the furthest plains, the last long shadow of night shrinking
its way toward me at the foot of the mountain.
I began to walk up the mountain, keeping the same pace as the retreating shadow,
eventually letting it overtake me, the gray dark air becoming light, becoming
rocky incline, talus cracking under my feet, becoming sweet scents of purple
and yellow flowers and especially the white capped aroma (slightly sour at first
then sweet) of wild yarrow, becoming brightly colored prayer cloths flapping
from buffalo berry bushes and ponderosa pine, becoming mountain sparrows and
robins and luminous yellow gold finches to a butterfly planted on a bush, wings
opening and closing in a slow, halting, silent applause. It is a walk that also
becomes a heaviness in my thighs, a shortness in my breathing, until I must
pause, a respite, my hand timidly on the burnt bark of a dead pine (from the
devastating fire of 1996).
Half way up the southern slope, with still another 700 feet of hiking around
to the east and up to the peak, I look back down and there spreads the Great
Plains in a series of sloping undulations of new summer green, some places clotted
with stands of cottonwood trees, the rest grass--presently green, but come the
first full week of rainless, wind scoured sunlight, it will redden for a day
or two gradually fading to a brownless brown its natural, "Great Plains" coloring.
But for now: green space, seemingly endless, that is somewhat shocking from
this first view a thousand feet up and away from the flat stretch of highway.
A flicker of color nearby--a bird or flower or prayer cloth alive in the wind,
a spirit reminding me of where I am, of what this mountain has been all about,
and personally, what the task is before me.
Onward and upward, I march, not Boy Scout style or as a strolling tourist with
the proverbial camera banging my chest. The sign at the trail head suggested,
"Whisper when talking to others." I took this to mean a deeper task for one
alone such as myself. For me, this meant trying to hush my "monkey mind" as
the Buddhists call it, the incessant chatter in my head of all that life I left
back down the hill. Like some kind of crazed short-wave radio operator late
at night who can't just listen to one signal for more than thirty seconds, my
mind still "broadcasted" snippets of conversations, some overheard, some actually
engaged in. They ranged from the previous night to the day before that, some
a month old, some ten years earlier-- an old argument replayed, a mis-communication
("What I meant to say..."), a lingering critical judgement ("If I were her,
I'd...")--until it all runs together to become, finally, nothing but static.
Immediately, almost angrily, I reminded myself to pay attention.
Pay attention. Pay as in giving something. A tithe, a donation, an offering
of respect, of consciousness, of mindfulness. Attention as in listening. To
the chirps, the buzzes, the crunching under my shoes, and the pockets of silence
in between, reminding me where I am, not who. And what I am doing at this very
moment, not before or later. Pay attention to the rock I've just stumbled over.
To the next step. And the next. To the sharp light splashed on the bearberry
bushes. To the sudden sweet scent of some mountain flower or the odd oil-burnt
smell of creosote on the logs lining the path. Shhhhhhh. Walk, breathe, sense.
I resume, quieter somewhat, slower. In no hurry. The pace of my ascent now coinciding
with the rising sun. I look at the fiery orb, a hand rubbed, polished apple--Golden
Delicious-hanging from a branch of sky just above the horizon. I feel its first
heat and strip off my lined, flannel shirt. Immediately, I grow thinner, lighter,
more flexible, but also more vulnerable as I ascend. I try to fight off the
nagging thought of unworthiness, of being spiritually "incorrect." I stop, turn,
and see that the plains are now brilliantly lit, and incredibly, have grown
larger, greener.
I stand next to a stone outcropping with yellowish lichen marbling its north
face. I pull out the Kinnick Kinnick, traditional ceremonial tobacco of bear
berry, red willow, osha root, mullen, and yerba santa--friend Jenny's gift.
I hold a pinch of it out before me and realize I'm at a loss for words. I feel
intimidated by the responsibility of the act. I wish to do this right. Me, some
middle-aged, would-be apprentice without a master.
I begin by thanking the mountain directly for allowing me to be here. I offer
a blessing which I hope doesn't sound too much to me like my father's terse
grace at Thanksgiving, Easter, and Christmas (terse because the act reminded
him of his Southern Baptist heritage which he had abandoned long ago). I toss
the tobacco out like a farmer scattering feed, and surprisingly feel somewhat
more valid, though still unsteady. I move on.
Finally nearing the peak, I stop again, mainly to resist my European heritage
of "having to get to the top." Why? What is the point? "Because it is there,"
declared the first white man (with Sherpa guides) to scale Mt. Everest, Sir
Edmund Hillary. From what little I know about him, he was a man who seemed to
have had a reverence for mountains.
I try to think of his statement from a Zen Buddhist's perspective. "Because
it is there" then does not connote climbing simply for fun or fame or ego gratification.
If declared with a spiritual meaning, then the statement cannot be equated with
an insidious notion of, "I conquered the mountain, or I claim this mountain..."
Rather, "Because it is there" is a wonderful Zen statement, filled with meaningfulness,
yet completely understated, to the point of irony, even absurdity. "The sword
that kills the man is the sword that saves the man."
"Because it is there" beckons to me. It is a spiritual challenge for me to experience
this mountain more fully than I have. To put it another way, "Because it is
there," I must. Or, "Because it is there," and I am not. It is a challenge for
me to grasp what it means to "get to the top."
With such thoughts, I climb the last fifty feet to the top. My first decision
is to avoid the large wooden, designated lookout platform. Not without some
trepidation, I follow a barely discernible footpath that traverses the ridge
to the south. There's one of those Park Service trail signs with a figure with
a walking stick and back pack hiking inside a red circle with a red line through
it. One thing I am clear about: I am not hiking. I step out on the path already
lined with prayer cloths and offerings with as pure an intention as possible:
I'm here to offer a blessing, to give thanks, to sprinkle some ceremonial tobacco,
and to practice zazen, sitting meditation, (my only "formal" praying).
And sitting among the prayer cloths, the small stone "altars" and cairns with
various offerings adorning them, I am most mindful of the space I inhabit, the
heady wind, the girth of mountain beneath me, the brassy light, and an odd species
of flies. They are as large as small bees, but they don't zoom all about like
the common house fly. Instead, they hold still in mid- air, much like a dragonfly,
buzzing as they do, seeming to watch me. After awhile, a couple "bump" me here
and there, on an elbow, a forearm, the top of my head--am I spirit or flesh?
Am I being respectful? These are the guardians I know--maybe even the spirits
of the ancestors themselves. I try to stay centered as long as possible...longer.
This means losing my "I." Instead, be here and nothing else, but present in
the sharp rocks, the ponderosa pine riffling with color, the prayer cloths alive
in the stiff breeze that remind me I will not fool anyone here, especially myself.
This isn't a game. This isn't "cool," or a "Wait until I tell somebody" opportunity.
This is, for me, my practice, my best effort at faith, which Katagiri Roshi
says is not something given by somebody; nor is it something coming from you.
Rather, "faith means tranquility, and complete tranquility is the source of
our nature and our existence."
I gradually move out of silent, sitting meditation to consciously ask for blessings--for
my daughters, my son, my wife, all of my loved ones, friends, family, past and
present and future--as heartfelt and mindfully as possible. My heart is moved
to ask for a blessing for "all sentient beings," as the Buddhist vow puts it,
but I am thinking particularly of Pakistan and India, who in the past week have
been squaring off in a deadly nuclear showdown. I take vows and offer prayers
for the earth itself. I asked for nothing in return, except for assistance to
honor life in all of its manifestations, to continually cherish life with clarity,
conviction, and courage.
I manage to meditate about twenty minutes I guess, maybe thirty. I'm not that
strong spiritually yet. It takes great strength to worship--to surrender to
that which one barely comprehends, to give up one's intellect, one's rationality,
to "think" instead with the heart, to open oneself up to intuition, to intimation,
to a felt sense of the world, of the spirit of the world, of the energy of the
world. The kind of spiritual strength one finds in the figures of Moses, Jesus,
Buddha, Mohammed, Crazy Horse, Black Elk, and in our own times, a Ghandi, a
Martin Luther King Jr., a Mother Theresa. Giant shoes to fill, I know, but footsteps,
nonetheless, to follow.
Still, if it was thirty minutes, it was thorough, focused, and my sense of a
centerless center was interwoven with the centeredness of the mountain. As "I"
dissolved or diffused, the place coalesced and became more real as a site of
the earth's power, a spiritual capitol of the world.
Later, on the South Dakota State Park observation platform, I find I am unable
to write poetry. I couldn't "stop" experiencing the dynamics of the place--though
creative writing, poetry in particular, is often a way of connecting for me,
of becoming an integral part of the process of being in a place or of consciously
participating in an event, never with the "objectivity" of a reporter or scientist,
but only subjectively, sympathetically, intimately as a poet.
But I do have another way of praying. Laying down my pencil and notebook, I
began to dance Tai chi. I practice a version called "Embrace Tiger, Return to
Mountain" that incorporates the five elements (fire, water, wood, metal, earth)
into the dance. Dancing Tai chi brought me physically into accord with the movements
of wind, trees, prayer cloths, flies, sun, and space--the feeling of being on
top of a mountain, of moving in a slow circle following the sun, east to west.
Dancing atop this great wave of earth,
roots humming the ground below,
these feet rising and falling
to a silent song falling and rising
within this wooded space,
these limbs growing a tree of sky,
so flows this body: liquid bark
around blue stones of air
circling in the smooth light.
A half hour later, the sun, a half a ponderosa pine higher, I see far down the
mountain. Ranger vehicles already in the parking lots, and a mile away the first
visitor at the gate, and a half mile further back turning off the main highway
another visitor's car. I estimate they will be up here within an hour. My time,
alone, with the spirit of the place is coming to a close. And yet I linger not
ten feet from the steps of the platform on the way back down. There's one more
task I need to perform.
What is it? I sit, listening to the wind sighing through the blackened bones
of the pines. Later, Bear Butte State Park Ranger Chuck Rambow tells me the
Native Americans say the Great Spirit saved the mountain from being completely
burnt. But it was a terrific fire, devastating. Approximately, ninety percent
of the trees on Bear Butte were either consumed by the fire or scorched to a
point where recovery is unlikely. The Lakotas I spoke with the night before
insinuated it was "non-native people" who started it--accidentally.
But it seemed, to me, something was a bit askew with their tale or with all
"accidents." The emphasis shouldn't be who is to blame; it doesn't have anything
to do with blame. Even the Lakota seemed uncomfortable with their own explanation.
I heard an uncertainty in their voices as they told me about the "campfire that
wasn't extinguished properly." They spoke with more conviction when they mentioned
"a big wind," and that there had been a drought.
Finally, everyone agrees in hindsight--Cheyenne, Lakota, and Ranger Rambow.
It has been a purification wrought by the Creator. Everything is better today,
despite the loss of ponderosa pine and the frequent mud slides; there is much
new grass, even an abundance of the precious "June' grass used in Sundance ceremonies.
The day before I met a blithe, young woman, who worked in the information booth
at the Bear Butte trail head. She was chatty, spilling over with youth's sense
of its own vitality. She informed me the journey up the mountain was an "easy
hike" of about an hour and a half, and a half hour down. "You could be done
in no time."
Recalling her statement, I laugh quietly and am tempted to say to the sky, "Out
of the mouth of babes." But, I don't. As I begin my descent, however, I assume
a "no-time" attitude and begin walking mindfully one step at a time. In step
with my breathing. I center my concentration in my hara, my lower abdomen below
my navel. Centered and centerless, this is Kinhin, slow walking meditation one
practices between periods of formal sitting meditation in the zendo.
I walk neither stuck in my own thoughts, nor attached to the phenomenal world
about me. If anything, my focus is somewhere between both, for when I am feeling
particularly right, out there and inside are indistinguishable. During clear
moments, a pebble glinting in the sunlit path at my feet, glistens inside me.
Again, to use Zen phrasing, I walk mindfully.
Not I am walking down the mountain, but I am the mountain's walking consciousness.
I am its slope, its talus, it altitude, its gravity in my calves and thighs,
its eyes--seeing a mountain sparrow nearly invisible, mottled brown as the tree
limb it perches on. I am the mountain rose, the wild yarrow that rings the top
in clusters of white cupped flowers. I am the mountain's ears, its listening
to the wind, the birds, a jet 35,000 feet overhead, a single car winding its
way toward the visitor's center a mile and half below. I am also the mountain's
fingers and feet. As well as the mountain's mood of serenity and expansiveness,
its warming beneath the rising sun, its lingering coolness in the shade on its
unlit north side. Dogen Zenji uses the term "whole faith-like body," which means
your whole body and mind are exactly faith. It is with this kind of "whole faith-like
body," that I descend the mountain.
I notice a butterfly moving alongside of me, moving as I move. It has black
wings with splotches of white. It stays with me for twenty, thirty yards. I
can't help but think of it as escorting me on my way, a guide, a guardian, a
fellow sentient being. And then just as it stops, landing on a white flower
on the up slope, another butterfly appears, tangerine colored with black spots,
and immediately begins to escort me for the next twenty or thirty yards. It
is one of the most simple, silent, and subtle of events and yet I am beaming
with awe and gratitude for the attention.
I halt, again perhaps halfway, my hand against calcite rock. There a fly an
inch from my index finger. I move ever so slightly toward it and it moves minutely
toward me. It walks onto my fingernail. I make no motion to brush it off. In
fact, I carefully move my hand back to its kinhin position over the other folded
across my lower belly and continue walking meditation.
Nothing misses my attention and yet my attention holds onto nothing. Each flat
stone step every twenty-five feet or so, strategically placed where the path
switchbacks, traversing its way back and forth down the hill. Each twig, each
scattered leaf, the peppering of shade and light across the rock strewn path.
For the Lakota, this mountain (particularly the southern slope) represents the
bear of the Devil's Tower myth, who after futilely attempting to reach the young
princesses (or warriors) depending on who tells the tale, gave up, wandered
the fifty miles to this part of South Dakota and lay down to become Bear Butte.
But I'm still on the eastern slope, which is the "Cheyenne side" of the mountain
that they see as a great sacred lodge where their folk hero, Sweet Medicine,
received the Four Sacred Arrows, the medicine laws of the tribe.
In the past, these myths seemed historically and culturally so far away from
me. Yet, here I expect at any moment during my descent to meet one of the Old
Ones, maybe Sweet Medicine himself. I wonder what sort of sacred bundle I might
receive? Is there something I can take back to America at the end of the Twentieth
Century? Nothing material, I am sure of that.
Are we not already overladen and overwhelmed by things in our world? Not just
the microwaves and oven toasters and leaf blowers and designer everything, but
our throw away cameras and "antique" Barbie dolls and more watches than the
history of time. Not to mention the combined exhaust of millions of cars, buses,
R.V.'s, and A.T.V's on the ground, speed boats, oil supertankers, and jet skis
on water, and every kind of jet and aircraft in the air. Then there is the future
of things like digital television, the ubiquitous computer, and world wide web
(fiber optics forever!).
Enough. I know this is the so-called "Information Age," but where is wisdom
amidst this welter of things, like the thousands of satellites or space junk
orbiting the planet. Where's the center? Where's the still point? The hub? The
ground of all this being? What holds it together? Is there some super thing
or idea or ethos that gives it all meaning?
I descend, my body and mind attuned to the details of the place. I glance down
at the fly still sitting on my hand, silent, motionless. It waits too. My spirit
guide? Insignificant, even reprehensible creature, what truth could it carry?
I know the common attitude. But. I still resist swatting at it and walk with
it as my guide. In and out of the dappled light and shadow, I inhale the subtle
and rich scent of pine and flowers I cannot name.
But the colors! Here and there in certain patches of bright light, a burst of
magenta and fuchsia and deep purple, splashes of creamy yellow and sky blue.
I can't imagine what the fly sees with regard to its magnified sense of seeing,
but to me, the colors are so vivid as to be fully meaningful as simply color
for its own sake.
As if on cue upon reaching a certain boundary, the fly tickles my hand as it
moves for the first time, perhaps not more than a millimeter, before flying
off. Thirty seconds later, the first humans of the day, a young couple, walking
fast, but quietly. We pass without eye contact, wordlessly. The mountain gives
us permission to do this without guilt or feelings of uncomfortableness.
Then not long, three men, middle-aged, loud talking, kicking rocks, stumbling,
laughing. "How's it going?" the first booms. Cameras around their necks, sweating
already, no doubt in a hurry to get to the top, take their pictures, remark
about the view, then scramble down to where next? Devil's Tower to the West?
Mt. Rushmore to the South? A casino in Deadwood?
The last fellow erupts, huffing to me, "Bet it's easier going down!"
I steel myself, trying to not pass judgement (though I already have), but at
least amend my opinion a bit. They will receive what they bring in their hearts.
The mountain is ancient, imperturbable, mysterious. Spiritual responses--whether
rewards or repercussions--are unfathomable. Those who believe, who have faith,
and who act accordingly are astute and will be the first to recognize the movement
of spirit. Those who don't often perceive nothing and gain little or no knowledge.
Life begins with suffering, says the Buddha, and yet he is always depicted smiling.
Certainly, he must have known something many of us don't.
Here, back in my living room, I'm smiling, too. Not because I know what the
Buddha knows, but because six months have passed since that predawn hike and,
as winter begins to solidify around my house on a bluff near Powell, Wyoming,
I am still on Bear Butte. The sacred mountain has not left me.