My wife and I just got back from a trip to Black Butte Ranch in central Oregon, where we spent several days with my daughter's (Celeste) family — Patrick (husband) and Evelyn (my granddaughter). They live in southern California and came up for Evelyn's orientation at the University of Oregon, where she'll be a freshman this fall.
Yesterday we made a trip into Sisters for lunch and to browse Paulina Springs Books, a wonderful small town bookstore where I always find something to buy.
Two of the three books I purchased were Lee Child's Make Me and Hiking Zen by two Zen monks, Pham Xa and Pham Luu.
I'm a big fan of Lee Child's books about Jack Reacher, a kick-ass ex-Army MP who travels around the United States with just a toothbrush and the clothes he's wearing, getting into adventures and trouble not of his own making, since Reacher has a strong sense of duty to help people he encounters who are being victimized by someone(s) with power and influence.
It had been a while since I'd bought a Jack Reacher book. But I buy Zen books all the time. This one appealed to me because we were in a beautiful natural setting in central Oregon, and we live full time in a beautiful natural setting in western Oregon's Willamette Valley.
I didn't expect I'd find any commonality between a thriller book and a philosophical book. Yet I did. Jack Reacher thrillers rarely, if ever, include any descriptions about how Reacher views his life that make me pause and think, "Wow, I resonate with this." In this case, I liked the sentence so much, I committed it to memory as soon as I read it on page 4 of the book I'd just bought.
He had no place to go, and all the time in the world to get there, so detours cost him nothing.
Nicely put, Lee Child. It kind of fits with my oft-repeated meditation advice to myself, "Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to become." I described it this way.
Nowhere to go… Here I am, stock still on my cushion. No place else I need to be for the next 30 minutes or so. This is It.
Nothing to do… No mental place I need to arrive at either. I don't need to think, feel, imagine, perceive, or do anything else inside my head.
No one to become… Even more, no transformation of my basic being needs to happen from on high, or down below. Like Popeye, I am what I am (or, I yam what I yam).
This centers me in three dimensions of space, time, and being – exactly where I am. I realize that every movement from this center, on what spiritual traditions call a "path," is going to take me farther away from really real reality, not closer.
That's my theory, at least.
I'm also just a few pages into the Hiking Zen book. Here's some passages that struck me as Jack Reacher'ish. Or maybe it was these passages that made me think the Lee Child sentence was Zen'ish.
Often in everyday life, we walk to arrive somewhere. Hiking Zen's most basic principle is to arrive in each step we take, to stop losing ourselves in thoughts about the past or future.
…The unknown can be scary. It may feel more comfortable to be indoors in a house or to drive to work in a car. Observe, though, how the boxes we spend so much time in affect our minds. The mind mirrors its habitat. If we aren't careful, our worldview is drawn with very clear borders: this is mine, that is yours — we become territorial, overly attached to our boxes.
…Observing nature, we realize everything changes, and our habitual fear begins to loosen its grip.
…To claim our sovereign nature as free, wild, endlessly creative, and beautiful creatures, we need to train ourselves by untraining ourselves. We need to step out of the boxes in which we find ourselves and unravel our contemporary conditioning.
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Ah man, this is great!
In his eighties and in 2025, Brian’s stumbled upon a variation of “it’s about the journey, not the destination”!!
Now we’re getting into really advanced philosophising!
All we need now is for Ron E to come and tell you us how to live beyond belief and meaning…..by finding meaning in the transparently conceptual and abstract belief “the brain creates consciousness”, and for Appreciative Reader to write 10,000 words saying absolutely nothing, and I think Brian’s got another vanity project book on his hands!
😊
Wait till Brian finds out about Pooran Sant Satguru Huzur Maharaj Baba Bhagwan Littlest Hobo Ji, who I think is one of Sant Reacher Ji’s predecessors?:
“There’s a voice that keeps on calling me
Down the road, that’s where I’ll always be
Every stop I make, I make a new friend
Can’t stay for long, just turn around
And I’m gone again
Maybe tomorrow, I’ll want to settle down
Until tomorrow, I’ll just keep moving on
Down this road that never seems to end
Where new adventure lies just around the bend
So if you want to join me for a while
Just grab your hat, we’ll travel like that’s hobo style
Maybe tomorrow, I’ll want to settle down
Until tomorrow, the whole world is my home
There’s a world that’s waiting to unfold
A brand new tale no one has ever told
We’ve journeyed far, but you know it won’t be long
We’re almost there, we’ve paid our fare with the hobo song
Maybe tomorrow, I’ll find what I call home
Until tomorrow, you know I’m free to roam
So if you want to join me for a while
Just grab your hat, we’ll travel like that’s hobo style
Maybe tomorrow, I’ll want to settle down
Until tomorrow, I’ll just keep moving on
Until tomorrow, the whole world is my home”
Haha, Reacher, really?! That’s very, very cool! Because, for the longest time, Reacher has been *my* guilty pleasure.
Not quite when Lee Child first wrote him, not *that* long back. But from well before the TV/web series made the homeless urban vigilante a mainstream phenomenon. Since at least a decade, probably a bit more, I’ve been hooked onto Lee Child’s novels and short stories. I believe I’ve read every one of them, or at least most of them, and in fact own a good many of his books.
And, like I said, I’ve always been a bit …self-conscious?, of the campy nature of my guilty pleasure. Like, when reading this in public, on a flight for instance, I’d cover up the book with oldfashioned brown paper covering. Never exactly hiding this, should the subject come up: but unwilling to have my rather campy reading pleasure blazoned out to the world at large.
…Heh, great that you enjoy Reacher too, Brian. Yep, in many many ways he’s a cool guy, and not just because he kicks ass. Absolutely, there’s a cool free-of-attachment Zen vibe there. (Or, maybe, he’s no more than just a commitment-phobe, given his whole life, is all. That less dramatic reading works, as well. But, either way, a cool read, that’s for sure.)
Hiking Zen Book: – “Often in everyday life, we walk to arrive somewhere. Hiking Zen’s most basic principle is to arrive in each step we take, to stop losing ourselves in thoughts about the past or future.”
There is an idea that meditation is to empty the mind of thoughts and that one meditates to attain peace and thereby a life that is undisturbed by life’s happenings. Zen/Chan teaching and practice is more about understanding the mind and to do that is to acknowledge thoughts – without getting caught up in them.
Undoubtedly the meditation beginner will start from the basis of ‘getting something’ either peace of mind, something he/she has heard of called enlightenment or in more extreme cases, after years of practice, some sort of afterlife. With Zen, sooner or later it dawns on the practitioner that there is nothing to achieve and realises that ‘this’, this aware moment is all there is – whatever it may bring – and ‘this’ is always changing
It’s a concept that is hard to accept, as being wedded to the notion of gain, of ‘what’s in it for me’ – and not to mention the self’s continual search for validation and continuation – the need to ‘arrive somewhere’ is an anathema to most of us.