Chapter 7: The Middle Way - Awakening

In 1996 my (then) wife Michele and I sponsored a series of Buddhist talks at the Ethical Culture Society center in Teaneck, NJ. The previous year, Michele lost her mother to cancer, a prolonged and painful ordeal for both of us, and that experience sparked our commitment to being proactive Buddhists.

At that time I was often traveling to Singapore and Malaysia on business and was spending countless hours in airplanes. At a bookstore in Singapore I picked up an introductory book on Buddhism by an Indian author and devoured it cover to cover during the flight home. Hungry for more, I started reading book after book, from Suzuki to Thurman to Deshung Rinpoche to the Dalai Lama.

In my quest to understand the process of death and dying from a Buddhist point of view and to make sense of my mother-in-law’s passing and my own mortality (I was hospitalized for a week on the eve of my 40th birthday, diagnosed with sarcoidosis), I read “The Tibetan Book of the Dead”. Although it didn’t make much sense at the time, I found it a mystical and fascinating read. It was as though a huge gate had opened, engulfing my consciousness in blinding light, illuminating and expanding my perception of what it means to be Buddhist.

Michele and I invited many speakers to take part in our Dharma Talk series. Amongst them were Reverend Nakagaki, Lama Pema Wangdak, Geshe Lozang Jamsphel, Geshe Michael Roach, and Roshi Pat Enkyo Ohara.

In 1996 I met Geshe Michael Roach, a monk, and Ani Pelma, a nun, through the dharma talks. Michele contacted many Buddhist organizations in New York City, literally going through the Manhattan Yellow Pages, asking for referrals for speakers from Buddhist temples and organizations. She was single-minded and undeterred in her mission, and we were surprised at how open and friendly the people were we contacted. It didn't take long to fill 6 slots, scheduled every 2 weeks, for the Spring.

With little beyond word of mouth and a tiny text ad in our local newspaper, the Bergen Record, we launched our Buddhist Talks. We didn't care how many people showed up and didn't ask for donations or support. We just wanted to do something interesting and, hopefully, inspiring and helpful for others. I didn't realize it would be us who would be inspired.

Geshe Roach was our first invited speaker. He was the director of an organization called the Asian Classics Institute (which I'd never heard of previously), headquartered at the time on the lower east-side of Manhattan. He was trained in Tibetan Buddhism in the Gelugpa sect, the Dalai Lama's sect, one of four in Tibet (Gelug, Sakya, Kagyu, Nyingma). Before meeting Geshe-la (the "la" is added with endearment), I had no previous exposure to Tibetan Buddhism. I grew up in my family's Japanese sect of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism.

Geshe Roach's talk was on the subject of karma. As he began his lecture it was apparent to me that this was someone who grew up in America, for his dialogue was suffused with colloquialisms and examples peculiar to American culture. I could immediately relate to him, which made his teaching all the more meaningful and significant for me.

His discourse on karma was circuitous and meant to make an impact. I remember Geshe Roach asking why it was that there were two close friends involved in a car accident where one was decapitated and the other survived with hardly a scratch. "Why?" he asked. "Why is it one met a horrible, sudden end, and the other walked away unscathed?" We all sat dumbfounded, stunned by the strong image conjured in our minds.

Quite coincidentally, a man who worked for my father, Leonard Gizzi, in his early 30s, was decapitated in a car accident while driving to work one morning in the mid-1970s, on his way to my father's office. That thought shot through my brain like a lightning bolt, stinging my spine. It was a terrible, untimely death, but no one for an instant doubted its randomness or its unfairness. Lenny was an impish, quiet, noticeably shy, and thoughtful young man who was well-liked by all. He was a hard worker who never complained, and my dad was very saddened by his passing. As was I.

Geshe Roach scanned the room and stared right through each of us. "Don't you see?" he implored. "It was their karma. Their individual karma was the cause of the accident, of one's almost instant, gruesome end, and the other's having to live with the nightmare of surviving it. Their deeds of this or a past life led them to this inextricable moment in time."

For the next hour Geshe Roach went on to explain the many flavors and degrees of karma, its components and contributing causes, its mysteriousness, and the fact that only a completely enlightened Buddha could completely fathom its inner workings.

I was absolutely mesmerized.

For all the years in my youth I had attended the New York Buddhist Church with my parents and brother, I had never heard karma explained so thoroughly by any Reverend. This was a complete and satisfying explanation that spawned as many questions as it answered. But for that ninety minutes something inside of my mind expanded.

For the first time, I was hearing the dharma.

Some time after meeting Geshe Roach, I started attending dharma classes he taught on the lower East side of Manhattan. Those early classes were taught in a student's loft space, decorated with beautiful hanging Thangka paintings and Buddha statues.

At some point, I started videotaping the classes with Geshe Roach's permission. All of his classes were audiotaped on cassette and later assembled into an archive. In fact, the Asian Classics Institute produced an entire series of courses for Buddhist home studies that were distributed to lay people, including prison inmates. Payment was based on one's ability to pay. The studies focused on the texts and topics Buddhist monks were taught to attain the geshe degree, awarded to monastics at the conclusion of a full course of studies. These classes are now online on the website of the Asian Classics Institute, free to anyone who desires to study the dharma.

As I videotaped the classes, the idea for a documentary started to take shape. The classes were filled with American converts who, like me, were being instructed in what I would consider orthodox and very pure Buddhist teachings, fundamental courses on morality, ethics, and that most fascinating topic, emptiness. The name for this documentary is "The Lotus in the New World: Buddhism in America"

In Buddhism, "The Three Jewels" refer to the trinity of the Buddha, his teachings, the dharma, and the monastic community of spiritual friends, the sangha. The Three Jewels was also the name of a small store on the lower east side of Manhattan where Geshe Roach taught many of his early classes. The location gradually evolved from a tea house to a bookstore and gift shop to a meditation and community center.

The store was originally run by a nun, Ani Pelma, who was part of a Gelugpa monastic order of nuns and monks ordained by Khen Rinpoche (Sermey Khensur Rinpoche Geshe Lobsang Tharchin), Geshe Roach's root teacher. At the time, Khen Rinpoche was the abbot of Rashi Gempil Ling Temple, a Mongolian Buddhist temple, in New Jersey.

As I continued to videotape dharma classes at night and on weekends, I became acquainted with many of the American dharma students, nuns and monks. Through the original Dharma Talks series in New Jersey, I met Lisa Hochman who had a background as a PBS television producer. Lisa was of immense help in the early stages of planning and filming this documentary; she possessed a piercing intelligence, was extroverted and immediately likeable, and had knowledge of many other dharma centers and scenes. She had been an eclectic Buddhist, originally a Jew who floated amongst many different Buddhist groups, teachers, and retreats.

Lisa accompanied me on many tapings and conducted the interviews while I did the lighting, worked the DV camera, and adjusted the sound levels. We discussed the general questions beforehand, but the discussions were free form and open ended. It was Lisa's idea to expand the interviews and include not only lay practitioners, but nuns and monks as well. We began to explore the reasons why individuals were choosing the path of Buddhism and monasticism.
Geshe Roach was instrumental in helping me to interview his root teacher, Khen Rinpoche, in New Jersey, perhaps the only documentary footage of this extraordinary Tibetan Buddhist lama, who achieved the highest geshe degree as a young monk.

While I was busy with Geshe Roach's dharma group, Michele pursued her dream of opening a dharma center in our New Jersey home with Lama Pema.

My own family was connected with the Jodo Shinshu sect of Pure Land Buddhism in Japan, and my ancestors had been Buddhist priests for over 28 generations, close to 700 years, in the prefecture of Fukui located northwest of Tokyo near the sea. Of course, this lineage was possible because in our sect the priests married and had families, and the eldest son inherited the church and was expected to become a priest.

My own father, Toshihiko Sakow, escaped this fate when he was left behind in his birthplace of Fukui with his second eldest brother, Fumihiko, when my grandparents traveled to America to do five years of missionary work. Dad was so misbehaved that his uncle, Reverend Sasaki, my grandmother's father, asked to send Toshihiko to the states to join his parents. Fumihiko was left behind, the Second World War trapped my family in a desert internment camp, and my father pursued his artist dreams as an industrial designer for Chrysler in Detroit after the war. My uncle had no choice but to carry on the family temple, and his first son, my cousin Fumiya, would be destined for priesthood. And so, my fate as the eldest son of an eldest son of a Japanese temple family forever changed the course of my own karma.

I grew up visiting my grandparents, who lived in a Buddhist Temple in Santa Barbara, California. Later as an adult, I traveled to Japan and visited my relatives in Fukui, who lived in the 300 year old Sakow temple, in the village of Sakow (actually, the "w" at the end of "Sakow" had been added by U.S. Immigrations; it should probably be spelled "Sako"). My cousin Hitoye was a teacher in the Sakow Elementary School in Fukui.

So this notion of having a temple in our home, while radical, was not something altogether alien and unfathomable to me. I supported this effort but was certainly unaware of what exactly this would entail.

Once again, through our Dharma Talks, Michele connected with a Buddhist monk of the Tibetan Buddhist Sakya sect, Lama Pema Wangdak who was very enthusiastic and open to her idea of starting a center. He extoled the great karma of doing this, the blessing of such an effort. We agreed, and the search was on to find an appropriate home.

We quickly found a small home with a large finished basement that would be perfect for our center. After we moved in, Lama Pema became a member of our household, and soon thereafter the exiled Tibetan community in New York City donated a beautiful bronze Buddha statue, handcrafted in Kathmandu, Nepal, to the temple. The following spring Lama Pema and Lama Kunga from Nepal consecrated the statue and the temple in a long, elaborate puja ceremony.

Classes have been held at our dharma center since 1998, and I am proud to be a supporter of this community. Lama Pema has been a member of our household since that time and helped to raise our daughter Chloe. We love him deeply and respect his work.

I continue to work on the documentary.

Chapter 6: Grandpa's Passing

Yesterday Grandpa died. He turned 85 years old 6 days ago on October 17th.

The day after my first child, Chloe Frances, was born, 2 weeks ago yesterday (October 8, 1990), Grandpa went into the hospital with pneumonia and a collapsed lung. As I understand it, he was mostly lucid and coherent up until his death, and his condition had stabilized enough to get him released from the hospital last Friday. The prognosis looked good.

Coincidentally, my cousin Fumiya was in New Jersey and New York on business and not only did he get to visit with Chloe and us, but on the way back to Japan he was able to spend a couple of days visiting Grandma and Grandpa. He wasn't aware that Grandpa was sick until we spoke on Friday the 12th, and the following Wednesday he was in Fresno. When we spoke on Wednesday, Fumiya commented on the fact that Grandpa recognized him and seemed to be gaining his strength and clarity.

Dad, in his typical and wearisome impatient and assinine manner, got it in his head a couple of weeks ago to go out to California for a meeting with Moto Nohmura that never took place and to have an unnecessary and premature meeting with AMICUS Communications and Jerry Rosenbloom regarding a contract which was not even under way. All this, of course, at KSA expense -- the corporation formed by Kevin, Mom (holding Dad's stock) and myself. Fateful as it was, he was able to spend last Saturday evening and Sunday with his mom and dad and told me he thought Grandpa would be okay because he had eaten a bit while he was there. He came home yesterday afternoon about 5 P.M. and almost immediately got a call from Grandma that his father had died.

Originally my father was pissed off at me because I had told Grandma that he'd be in California, and this obligated him to visit them, especially since his father was in the hospital. I had even chided him for not wanting to be with his father on his deathbed, assuring him that I would be there for him when he was dying. His immature and typically assinine retort to my comment was, "I don't care if you're there or not." And people wonder why I treat him with such disrespect.

Dad called Uncle Laverne who agreed to preside over the funeral and who agreed to leave immediately to be with Grandma. Uncle Massey, Connie and Raymond will attend but Fumihiko, himself ill in Japan with an ulcer and stomach cancer, cannot attend. There was talk about a great many BCA ministers being contacted to be present at the funeral. And so, the predictions I made some months ago about the passing of my Grandfather are coming true with eerie precision.

Grandma is understandably upset, although this outcome has been long in coming. I guess death is hard to accept no matter how well prepared one is for it. One always clings to hope and life.

It all seems so ironic to me that my child, his great-grandchild, would be born so close to his passing. Chloe will never know her great-grandfather, only see him in family pictures and referred to in our reminiscence. Perhaps if she should read my novel someday in the future, if it's ever completed, she'll get some inkling as to his significance in my life. Perhaps others who have known him will remember him in a light of humanism and dignity. A man's life is, after all, the sum of what he does and says.

Chapter 5: Forward to the Past

When my father and I flew into Tokyo in September of 1988 it was raining as it always does when we arrive there. This was my second trip, and it dawned upon me that it just wouldn't be Tokyo if it wasn't grey and dreary and wet. Our luggage appeared on the gleaming stainless steel Narita Airport baggage carousel without a hitch, checked with typical Japanese precision by neatly uniformed checkers, and Customs was orderly and painless. We had made it.

The three hour bus ride from Narita to downtown Tokyo traversed the interwoven patchwork of small farms and tiny feudal wooden homes with square rice paper windows and dark ceramic tile roofs. I was struggling with a cold and a low grade fever which took root the day before our departure in New Jersey, and I was feeling quasi-miserable. After fourteen and a half hours in a fully booked 747, I was completely jetlagged and semi-conscious.

I groggily observed the transition from rice paddies and vegetable fields to tidily ordered suburbs to a massive dark urban sprawl peppered with scintillating neon billboards and crisscrossed by narrow rivers and even narrower elevated highways. The bus crawled along in the rush hour traffic, the white-gloved, navy blue uniformed driver listening intently to the bursts of Japanese traffic chatter on his two way radio. My father snored loudly as he dozed, not seeming to disturb any of the polite and dead-quiet fellow passengers. I was too tired to sleep, too congested to smell my father's foul breath.

We cabbed it from the bus terminal to Mr. Okamoto's apartment near the Daimon rail station and Shiba Park in the area known as Hamamatsucho, not far from the gaudy Ginza district of Tokyo. The taxi was spotless, without a dent or scratch, as are all the vehicles in Tokyo. Indeed, Tokyo is the most ordered, polite, immaculate, and crowded city I've been to in all the world.

In America, we equate a dense urban population with seething violence, high crime, poverty and racial tension. That is simply not the case in Japan. Tokyo is one of the busiest and most crowded cities in the world, and yet it is amongst the safest. This applies to all of Japan. There are many theories for why this is so: the homogeneity of the Japanese population, the societal conformity, the high degree of education and literacy.

Whatever the reasons, make no mistake about it. For all its detractions, the insanely high cost of living, the suffocating crowdedness, the maddening traffic snarls -- this is a society that seems to work. And this knowledge has caused me time and time again to question the very fabric of American society.

The cab driver wasn't very familiar with the exact location of the building (the building numbers on Tokyo streets are non-consecutive and, like any large, centuries-old city, the streets are a tangled maze), so he dropped us off at a nearby major intersection and we schlepped our heavy bags through the rain up to the apartment.

Mr. Okamoto, a distinguished looking millionaire executive in his mid 60s and close business associate friend of my father, was waiting for us there with one of his employees, Mr. Tanaka, a wiry, white-haired gentleman.

Having lodged at the Hilton in Tokyo's Shinjuku district the last time I was in Japan, this was my first stay in a private home. As I expected, the apartment was small, its furnishings compact and functional and, even though it was a one bedroom, it was not much larger than a studio apartment in New York. Also, it was difficult to suppress a pervasive stench of insecticide.

Okamoto-san insisted on taking us out to dinner, this despite my near comatose state, and I accepted conditioned upon a hot shower and shave. I felt sweaty and dirty and in desperate need of a change of clothes. Within an hour we were on a subway headed for the Ginza district.

The tiny restaurant was on an upper floor of a narrow nondescript office building. We stepped down a narrow stained wood hallway through a curtained partition and were immediately greeted by two kimonoed Japanese Hostesses who seemed to know Okamoto-san very well. They sat us around a rectangular wooden table Western style, that is, on chairs. Okamoto-san proceeded to order up dish after dish of subtle Japanese delicacies, most of which I had never eaten or even seen served in any other restaurant or home.

It mattered little that I couldn't fathom ninety percent of the Japanese discussion bantered about me, for I was much too preoccupied with the fascinating cuisine: fresh sashimi with sweet raw shrimp that literally melted in my mouth, thin broiled fish served on long, narrow dishes, piping hot lemon grass soup, dark buckwheat and thick white udon noodles with dried fish shavings, and a huge fish head in a clear broth whose milky eye Tanaka-san quickly scooped out and graciously served me.

The only thing I noticed that was conspicuously missing from this feast was steamed white rice. Could it be that native Japanese didn't eat rice with their meals? Or did it have more to do with its not clashing with the delicate fish tastes? I was much too tired to wrestle with this culinary issue; indeed, I was thoroughly exhausted and could not finish any plate that was set before me.

It was about 10:30 PM when we all parted our ways and my father and I headed back to the apartment. Okamoto-san would stay in a hotel to allow us privacy. I had been awake nearly 28 hours straight without any significant sleep and was now battling to keep conscious. Once my head hit the pillow I brought with me from home, I blacked out, my slumber intermittantly disrupted by the droning din of the livingroom television before my snoring father.

The next morning, my father and I accompanied Tanaka-san by rail to an amusement trade show where Okamoto-san's company was exhibiting their wares. We stayed a couple of hours here, most of my time spent waiting on line to test a new electromechanical arcade video game. The ride was an extremely realistic cockpit trainer-type simulation of an assault helicopter attack on a fleet of enemy ships and island bases.

Chapter 4: The Vision

I've seen those corners of the world
and now I seem empty.
The stars and the seas converge within me
My soul is gone
and my memories have melted into the blurs of the present.
I have lost myself in a symphony of time.
1972

On Saturday, January 23rd, 1983 I drove to Albany, New York to visit my friend Andy and his girlfriend Sue. I went alone, bringing with me a few grams of dried psilocybin cubensis mushrooms grown with my own hands. The intention was simple: we were to share a psychedelic experience.

It was a bitter cold and overcast January day with icing conditions overtaking the roads that precluded all but the most necessary travel. Alas, common sense was never one of my great virtues. All I chose to acknowledge that day was how long it had been since I'd last seen Andy since his retreat to the hinterlands. Much too long between friends. And besides, there was the promise of adventure ahead, hallucinatory respite. I'd always been a sucker for adventure, a reckless young fool preoccupied with the pursuit of ephemeral kicks, exotic sensory gratification, and tooling up the New York State Throughway at ill advised speeds the caffeine and adrenaline pumped through my veins in anticipation.

At the time, Andy and Sue worked as reporters for a local Albany newspaper, The Knickerbocker News. As a fellow writer I'd always felt close to Andy, a tacit brotherhood bonded by words. I was impressed and ever amused by his wit and intelligence, sense of humor and raconteurship. And even though our points of view were opposed on many issues, I understood his inner need to verbalize, to record his thoughts on paper, to leave a legacy of existence even if only to himself. We shared these needs and drives.

I arrived at Andy's modest 3 room upstairs apartment around 1:30 in the afternoon. Sue was there, lovingly referred to by Andy as "Spagnoli" ("Why?" I asked him and he quickly replied, "Because she reminds me of a Spagnoli."), and we all exchanged greetings and warm bear hugs, for Andy is a bear of a person. They were surprised I'd made the treacherous journey, especially alone (a friend who was to accompany me backed out the day before), and had tried to call to advise postponement but I'd already departed. It wouldn't have mattered anyway; I was dead set on coming.

Within minutes I was sitting on Andy's cushy living room sofa making small talk, obligatory beer in hand, feeling quite at home playing with Sue's rambunctious newly acquired kittens, Rhino and Peep, and soon thereafter we were cutting and grinding the dried mushrooms into as near a powder as we could muster. By 3PM the powder had been judiciously mixed with apple sauce to disguise its musty, slightly bitter taste and the mixture ingested. I felt a bit restless from driving all morning and sitting around, and Andy suggested we take a walk down to the Mall to pay a visit to the Museum of Natural History.

We trudged through snow in places a foot deep from the prior weekend's snowfall and tried to avoid slipping on the icy streets. The air was crisp, edged with an icy bite that stung our unprotected ears, the sky was grey and churning, almost foreboding.

The drug began to come on in the Museum as we walked down near empty hallways dominated by lifesize environmental dioramas of forests and logging scenes. The whole place took on a disturbing, disorienting aura of surreality, feeling real yet unreal, and after hastening through many of the remaining galleries, soon became too much to handle. Venturing outside, we were immediately assaulted by Musak of the most offensive variety being broadcast over loudspeakers around the skating rink. We rushed from this place and walked along the Mall.

Even in a normal state of mind the Mall is a strange, surreal sort of place; the drug just intensified its weirdness to a ridiculous level. Filled with metal sculptural monstrosities donated or commissioned by the Rockefeller administration, it struck me as being a bad joke on the City of Albany, sort of "Rocky's folly". I mentioned this out loud and we all exploded with gut wrenching laughter far exceeding the hilarity of the remark. It was clear we were well within the drug's grip.

The wind chilled the air into a frigid whip lashing against our faces. Our thoughts focused only upon returning to the apartment and we did so in silence, taking a roundabout route. Once inside I could feel the drug peaking, or perhaps the severe outside stimuli had been diminished to the point where we could concentrate on the drug's interior manifestations.

The cold brought on the urge to urinate, so I stepped into the dark bathroom to relieve myself. Suddenly I perceived undulating geometric forms pulsating in the shadows around me, spiderweb shapes, polygons, and moire patterns vibrating in monochromatic shades. I closed my eyes and they continued inside my mind's eye. I wasn't scared, just fascinated by these subtle changing shapes.

Back in the living room it took me some ten minutes to roll a joint which eventually was only partially smoked. I sat down in a comfortable armchair, body heavy and stomach filled with a million fluttering butterflies, closed my eyes and let my mind drift.

Sue sat back on the sofa, eyes sealed, lips frozen in an eternal smile while Andy attempted to hold his consciousness together, spewing non-stop gibberish, slipping himself into amusing verbal cul-de-sacs, every so often chortling at some remark he'd just made.

A sensation of falling overcame me, a feeling not unlike the one one sometime feels when they're stupefied drunk. At first I tried to fight it, I tried to anchor myself to the room around me, desperately clutching the chair's arms, but at some point I simply let go and fell, free fall, slipping ever rapidly into a black Void.

I drew my legs up close to my body and felt the room, Andy's voice, and the Earth slip away from me as I hurled down a narrow tunnel. I could feel this unsettling sensation of falling right in the pit of my stomach, at the center of my being, and the further and faster I descended, the more comfortable it felt.

Soon the sense of falling diminished and I found myself, for lack of better words, on another plane of consciousness, another plateau, one which I had never ventured to ever before (at least, not in this lifetime). Philosophical questions streamed through my mind non-stop, and with them, images projected on the movie screen of my mind -- except it wasn't a screen but another reality I existed within.

I was floating in the silent vacuum of Space above the Earth, a Soul without body, without Ego. Below me were Human planes of existence, spiritual levels of consciousness. On the lowest level were the masses caught up with the physical and material plane of suffering and envy, sexual craving and hedonism, swarming like ants around a dark seething anthill. Somewhere above was a level of priests, nuns, monks, and common people, those spiritually evolved individuals who strove to find truth, inner peace, and harmony in their lives and the world around them.

On the highest level bathed in a majestic purple glow were the spiritual leaders of Mankind: Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and countless others, those who had raised their consciousness beyond selfishness to selflessness, those who had achieved some degree of Enlightenment in their lifetimes. I understood in an extremely visceral way the place of these leaders and the "God" potential in each of us, that capacity for nirvana inside.

The unspoken philosophical questions burning within my Soul all seemed to be answered by this complex image, this awareness, and the answer seemed indisputably true and absolute.

I perceived my life within a spectrum of the spiritual evolution of Mankind and understood my place, the product of centuries of Buddhist priests striving for satori. I realized for the first time, in a clear and crystallized way, that the path I've chosen, writing, is aligned with my evolution as an individual and as a Soul here on Earth.

So many Truths unraveled from this cataclysm, this gentle explosion inside my head. I felt so warm, so at peace within its glow; I had no fear of death and would not have minded in the least if my physical existence had ended right then and there.

Slowly, I became cognizant of the room around me and the image gently faded from my consciousness. As the drug's intensity subsided I was left feeling extremely relaxed in its wake, my mind so peaceful and calm. Sue's kitten Rhino, usually so animated and possessed with wildness, was snuggled up next to me in a deep sleep as if it felt and was absorbed by my tranquility. Andy and Sue both remarked how Rhino never acted this way.

So changed was my demeanor that Andy stared at me for a long time and asked, "Was this time different from the others?"

I smiled, nodded, "It most certainly was..."

* * * * * * *

Years after this experience I find the memory of it blurred, its significance swallowed by the myriad petty details of everyday existence. Indeed, I found this to be true just three days afterward.

I have endeavored to the best of my limited abilities to explain what happened that January Saturday to a few of my closest friends and lovers, even to my Uncle Laverne who, as a Buddhist priest, I hoped would have some insight and empathy on this matter. Though polite and understanding, none of them comprehended what I was saying. What did I honestly expect? I have since given up on trying to relate my experience to others. Except for a few journal entries and this chapter, it has been locked up inside of me, an event etched into both my consciousness and unconsciousness, ever at the back of my mind.

Of course, I quickly realized how personal a matter this is and how impossible it is to relate verbally. I have meditated upon it many times and am absolutely certain countless others have had similar experiences. I am not unique or special. It's also obvious that the drug allowed me to become disconnected from my Ego and surroundings, it facilitated and enhanced the "floating" of my consciousness to that "other plane".

I have often wondered if this experience could be duplicated or if it would ever happen again; indeed, I have tried many times and failed. However, I have not given up hope, nor am I distressed or saddened by my failure. I am quite content in knowing I've had a taste of some higher Truth, one that suddenly and unexpectedly revealed Itself to me, as though some floodgate burst open within my soul and allowed the great ocean to rush through me.

Buddhism has taught me that Life is illusory, ephemeral, and based upon suffering and karma. Truth is immutable, eternal, and absolute. The Soul is fluid, connected with all that is the Universe. And within us is everything.

Chapter 3: Edo Period Japan

Rows of Buddhist monks chanted sutras in rhythmic unison within the Jodo Shinshu temple. Their droning voices carried outside the massive wooden building through its rice paper windows, muffled by fresh snow on the dirt and cobblestone dusk streets of the tiny rural Japanese village of Fukui Prefecture on the northwest Honshu island.

A peasant woman in a snow-dusted, wide-brimmed straw hat and wooden geta, or clogs, silently deposited a dark ceramic urn filled with grains of rice on the temple's door step. She then bowed deeply, hands clasped, wrinkled eyes closed tightly, and muttered the Nembutsu prayer to herself as the droning voices continued, "Namu Amida Butsu."

Inside, the monks sat erect in lotus position in the near darkness, the pause between verses punctuated by short measured inhalations. Scores of bald shaved heads framed by jet black robes bowed in symmetrical rows before the candlelit golden shrine of Amida Buddha, the Enlightened One.

The Elder Priest kneeling at the head of the room raised a cylindrical ebony mallet and struck the cast iron temple bell several times. Its bellowing ring resonated through the chamber, through each narrow temple corridor, echoing endlessly through minds empty of thoughts, focused only on the Void within.

One monk, Hideo Sako, could not concentrate. His torso rocked gently back and forth, brow wrinkled with stress as his lips formed the syllables of rote prayer. Beyond tightly closed eyes he was crouched behind the wide trunk of an elm tree at a river's edge. Hugging the trunk, he pressed his head against the chalky bark, scraping his cheek as he edged his face out ever so slightly, straining for a view.

The Elder Priest rose slowly until he was standing. He gazed out at the rows of chanting monks, focusing on the orange-red dot painted on each forehead, studying them. Picking up his ebony mallet in one hand, he began walking down the aisle.

In Hideo's mind, sitting nude on a smooth flat rock in the rushing river currents was Kumiko, a beautiful village girl of fifteen. Hideo spied her as she wrung her hip-length ink black hair of water in her tiny hands, her knees slightly parted and dark pubic triangle in view. Kumiko's developing breasts were full and perfect, her round nipples pink and erect from the cold water, and her smooth, unblemished skin pale and milky.

Hideo breathed heavily and irregularly, gasping at her luscious female symmetry. Short moans escaped his lips. Sweat trickled down his furled brow as blood engorged and distended his pulsating male organ. He reached down inside his robe to free his manhood from his clothes.

Ripples of bright, undulating points of light flickered before Hideo's eyes as the back of his head took the full impact of the Elder Priest's swinging mallet. Blood trickled down his neck as he slumped over in his place unconscious, forehead touching the tatami mat floor.

The other monks continued their chanting, never missing a beat. The Elder Priest continued down the aisle.

Chapter 2: Grandpa

The year is 1989. My grandfather, Reverend Shawshew Sakow, is dying. He's been dying for some time now; that is to say, he's been dying slowly and quietly and has been mostly ignored. I hear of his life status every once in a while around the holidays and at those infrequent times my parents are inclined to call long distance to say hello to their kin. Words spoken to me about him are staccato and declarative, "He isn't well."

"He doesn't have long."

"Any day now."

They've been delivered to me in short bursts for over a year and a half now, building in me enough curiosity that I have begun to wonder.

My grandparents live in a modest trailer-home in a trailer park on the outskirts of Fresno, a desert city in the fecund San Joacquin Valley of California that lies between San Francisco and Yosemite National Park. Their daughter, my aunt Rumiko and her in-laws, the Arakawa's, live close by, close enough so that the exact time, place and circumstance of his demise will be recorded with some degree of accuracy.

His passing will cause a small ripple through the hundreds of congregation members who worshipped at one of the many Buddhist temples where my grandfather spent time as their minister, one as far away as San Paolo, Brazil where he was a Bishop for a brief time during his retirement. No doubt, there will be tears and prayers and kind words which mask the indifference most will feel, including his own children's. But I will remember. I will cry inside and feel a loss and emptiness that will probably never leave me. I will force myself to remember.

In the past years my grandfather has become a burden to his wife, Masako, and his family, but mostly to his wife. As he passed into his 80s his body shriveled to a bag of bones and now he weighs about 85 pounds at 5' 5". He's shrunk physically, and rarely has the strength to stand or walk. He gave up his life long obsession with golf (he played 18 holes nearly every day) because he could no longer meet its phsyical demands. His car was taken away because he could not be counted on to return; perhaps he forgot that he had to go home. After a bout with TB, grandma relentlessly hid his cigarettes until he gave up trying to find them.

He's had mysterious spots on his lungs that have been diagnosed as TB, cancer, and water, but which remain a mystery. He has little control of his bowels or bladder and his wife must cleanse him daily. He hardly eats a mouthful each day.

If ever there were a case of someone who had ostensibly given up living, I imagine my grandfather would be a prime candidate. But I'm not so sure. I think he has slipped into a dream.

My grandfather has always been an extremely quiet, thoughtful man. An intellectual widely read with a voracious appetite for books and an ascetic, his meditative nature led him to silent prayer each day. Some would say that he was this way because he was a priest, and I would not argue. As a product of 27 generations of Buddhist priests, he had no other choice in life than to carry on the family tradition of priesthood, the karma of generations whose ties bound him to family, obligation, and destiny. He dutifully fulfilled his destiny and became a Buddhist missionary sent to America in 1936 only to suffer the indignations of racism and militarism in a desert relocation internment camp in Arizona during the Second World War.

I remember once as a child I caught him sitting in his bedroom (my grandparents have separate bedrooms) reading a Japanese-language paperback from his library of multicolored paperbacks. I was in awe of this little library so neatly arranged shelf after and upon shelf within arm's length of his bed and chair. I spied him in a shaft of light smiling and chuckling to himself as he read right to left and up and down the rows of box-like insect scratchings on each page. A cigarette burned in one hand that he would every so often draw to his lips to inhale a small puff from.

I stepped up to him, "What are you reading, grandpa?" I asked sheepishly.

Many times I had scoured his Japanese books and magazines looking for the soft-core sexual cartoons that pervade Japanese popular culture; women with flat cherry-tipped bosoms and hilarious looking couples engaged in various poses of sexual congress.

He smiled and put his book down and drew once again on his cigarette, "A friend of mine wrote this book." He said with a heavy Issei (first generation Japanese-American) accent.

I looked at him with wide eyes, "A friend?" No one I'd ever known had written something that was published and in so tangible a form.

He nodded, "Yes. He and I were monks at the Hongwanji together in Kyoto. Now he's a famous novelist in Japan." Grandfather said this with the slightest tinge of regret as he wiped his glasses clean with a lint cloth.

Suddenly he declared, "Someday I want to write a book."

"You should, grandpa!" I declared excitedly. It seemed like a natural to me. Grandfather had so much to write about, so many experiences as a priest, and his statement had the air of something he'd been pondering for quite a while, as though he meant it.

"Yes," he put his glasses back on and stared into the blinding shaft of light emanating from the window, "I should..."

The way he said this had a melancholy reverberation, and right then and there I knew this was something he'd never get around to doing and I felt crushed and crestfallen. All those experiences, I thought to myself, those insights and recollections, emotions and truths lost the moment my grandfather passes. And now that his time is drawing to a close ever so slowly and quietly, I cannot help but sit down and fill these pages with some memories that would reveal why his life is full of meaning and purpose. And how his lost dreams are my growing obsessions.

Chapter 1: Earliest Memories...

I have these fragments of early childhood memories, pieces of a visual, sensory jigsaw puzzle that has a myriad gaping holes...

My earliest recollection is as an infant in Detroit lying naked on the floor on a fleece white blanket next to a naked infant Japanese American girl. My parents took a black and white snapshot of this event that always stirs this particular memory. The little girl, Karen Hisata, was the only child of my parents bosom friends, Tom and Sotie, and this odd coupling must have been the source of some amusement. I must admit, we looked indelibly cute and as innocent as innocence can be, I with my chubby little arms and legs and full head of ink black hair (I was born this way), her with her hair tied in a bow on the top of her head like an asian Pebbles.

Understandably, I don't remember falling down a flight of stairs in my parents' Royal Oak (my pre-school babbling rendered it "Oak Oak"), Michigan home, and I don't recall my lower front incisors cutting through the bottom of my lower lip or the hospital stitches required to sew the mess up. Funny, I can visualize the stairs in my mind, but not the fall. The brain suppresses such traumas. Circumsized males never recall their penis hazing either.

I have these slivers of thoughts about the Gerletti boys, much older than my brother Kevin and I, who lived next door. Rough-housing and running wild in the front yard with these big, fair-haired ever-smiling young men, Lee and Kim. Their father's name was Bruce and I always assumed I was named after him, but this was pure coincidence. In typical Japanese American fashion, my parents chose what seemed like perfectly normal American names (albeit, Scottish: Bruce and Kevin) for their children, belying the fact that we were as oriental and immigrant and different from White Anglo kids as you could get. At least our first names would raise no eyebrows.

Amusingly enough, my father told me I'd been named after his favorite comic book character Bruce Wayne, the Dark Knight himself. Parents get their inspiration for naming their offspring from very strange places.

The most vivid and haunting early recollection I have comes from the period when I was perhaps five on the eve of my family moving from Detroit to New York City. The year was 1961. For some reason the thought that this was our last night in Detroit is overwhelmingly real. We were staying next door at the Gerletti's. Our home was empty and ready for the new owners. I remember falling asleep in a strange room. I sense my mother's presence in the room with my brother and I. Asleep.

Sometime that night I awoke, or believe I did. The bedroom was still and eerily silent. Everyone in the house was asleep. There were long shadows in the room cast by moving branches and distant streetlamps. For some reason, I began to stare through the door of an open closet. It was as though I was drawn to that space. Within the dark umbra of the closet I perceived faint shadows that lay beyond the physical confines of its space. I rose from my covers and stepped into the closet, pressing past dangling clothes, groping in the inky darkness for its rear wall. There was none. Being more curious than afraid, I continued to move forward. Into the void.

Soon I sensed I was walking through the center aisle of a cold long dark room, passing row upon row of shadowy beds, ever so faintly outlined against dim walls. It struck me as being a hospital ward of some kind, beds filled with forms - bodies that were very still. There was no sound in this corridor and, although I observed these forms, I could not make out any features or faces or movement. At the end of the corridor I perceived a tall emaciated female figure - a nurse with her hair bundled tightly beneath a cap. She seemed to be waiting for me, observing me from within a haunting shroud of opacity.

Suddenly I stopped dead in my tracks. I had this overwhelming sense of uncertainty. It was a curious feeling because I wasn't exactly afraid and I wasn't certain whether I should stay. But something inside, a spirit -- something instructed me to turn around and leave this place for, if I remained, I sensed I would somehow never leave.

I remember about-facing and passing these murky rows. From askance I made out shadowy crucifixes hanging on the walls above each bed, grey on grey. My pace quickened, I could feel my heart thumping and the air race in and out of my nostrils. I emerged from the closet and made a bee-line for my bed, slipping between the covers. I fell asleep instantly.

The next morning as my mom made their final preparations to leave, I stood before that closet and stared at it in the amber morning light. I stepped inside, pushed beyond the hanging pants and cotton shirts and felt its cool plaster walls. It was an ordinary closet in every way.

Shaking my head quizzically, at the age of five I wondered whether I had dreamt the entire experience, or had sleepwalked into another room. But the absolute vividness and reality of that corridor and those beds was unshakable, undeniable. I could smell that other place, feel my feet as they touched that cold stone floor, see that lone still figure at the corridor's end. The event had definitely taken place, and the dimensional wormhole portal was now sealed.

I never breathed a word of this experience to a soul, until many years later. When it was too late.

My family boarded a propeller plane and soared across the Midwest plains into New York City. I have these flashes of my first aerial view of the Manhattan skyline, these gleaming glass and metal towers rising above a grid of streets and traffic and teeming humanity, an Oz-like, nearly Orwellian vision.

My father settled us in a two bedroom apartment in Flushing, Queens on Parsons Boulevard, a curious location removed from the City and far removed from the treelined Royal Oak single family home suburbs. Our second floor abode afforded us a panorama of an asphalt street and traffic light and cookie cutter rows of four story red brick apartment buildings, like some modern Warsaw ghetto.

Behavioral psychologists almost universally agree that one's character is indelibly imprinted and emerged by the age of three; thus, whatever dominant and overriding personality traits I possessed were fully intact by the time we arrived in New York. Flushing became the formulative urban landscape of my developing psyche. In the early 1960's it was a neighborhood of working class Germans, Blacks, and Puerto Ricans and, as would be the norm throughout my life, we were one of the first Asian families in the area.

Being a skinny, smallish Asian kid who was not athletically inclined, I quickly became a victim of racism, verbal abuse, fistfights, and ostracism. My tormentors were mostly members of other minorities who delighted in having an even more helpless and hapless scapegoat to release their pent-up frustrations upon. I was never invited to play sports with the neighborhood kids, invariably shunned from their social encounters. Many an afternoon I ran home to my mother in tears after being verbally assaulted and physically battered by local ruffians.

It was the mean streets of Queens that ingrained deep within me the irrefutable self-realization I was immutably different from everyone else. It was my mother's tender love and sincere compassion that assured and convinced me I was special. And so I believe it was during this period of my life that I slowly withdrew from the physical outside world and began my retreat into the interior world of thought and creative expression.

This was not some random direction, for my life was brimming with influences, both conscious and unconscious.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

One morning in the tiny bedroom my brother and I shared in that Queens apartment, I struggled to open my eyes. I was in-between dreaming and waking, and was very conscious that I wanted to force my eyelids open. Soft, unfocused light bathed my retinas in blurry circles; they were superimposed over my dream imagery for a moment.

Introduction

I am a Japanese-American, a third generation sansei born in 1956 in Detroit, Michigan -- the deteriorating urban sprawl in the heartland of America known colloquially by African Americans as "Motown", or by the Silent Majority as "Motor City", the birthplace of the modern factory assembly line, Rhythm and Blues, and once home of America's fallen and iconic auto industry.

I am the product of two parents of pure Japanese ancestry and amusingly think of myself as "Made in America with All Japanese Parts".

My paternal grandfather was a Buddhist priest of the Jodo Shinshu Pure Land sect, and my family have been Buddhist priests in Japan for 29 generations, over 700 years. My maternal grandparents are gone; my mother's mother died when she was barely a teenager, and her father, a destitute photographer, abandoned his wife and 7 children years earlier and never returned. To this day we don't know where he went.

As an American of Japanese ancestry I have straddled two cultures and two identities with vastly different points of view. My disconcerting ambivalences have forced me more than once to take The Middle Path, and in so doing I have developed a degree of subjective-objectivity (yes, this is possible, but totally schizoid), introspection, and insouciance. However, more often than not, in my youth I was left confused and undecided and in emotional disarray.

I have spent my entire life engaged in a process of self-definition and -examination in the search for the essence of who I am, where I came from, and where I am going.

To keep things interesting, I have combined memoir and fiction, imagining ancient ancestors whose stories were spoon-fed to me by relatives in bitesize morsels, enough to get the flavor and texture, but always leaving me hungry for more.

I believe that my story and the story of my family, though unique, is a universal story of the American Immigrant Experience -- that forging of an identity within the simmering ethnic melting pot of the New World, the gold paved mountain, skyscrapered metropolis, and idealized land of plenty that beats in the heart of every foreigner who longs for opportunity, riches, and freedom -- and the right to call themselves an American.

* * * * * * * * * *

I have a confession to make. In my haste to get off my butt and do something, damnit! I put up this blog/website and posted chapters that are not quite completed; I'm sure those of you who have read ahead will realize this. I apologize.

I've been working on this novel for over 20 years and have only 7 chapters to show for it. Those of you who are writers will understand. We all believe that writing our novel will happen when things are just right: when your kid has graduated high school and is away at college, when you retire and never have to work again, when you have a long break and can just sit down and do nothing but write till your keyboard explodes.

Writers procrastinate endlessly. The smallest excuse like, Geez, that LOST re-run I've seen 3 times is gonna be on again -- or -- God-dangit, my car does need a wash right now. Need I go on? So, having taken Buddhist impermanence to heart, I realized that I could be mowed down by a 40 foot semi at any time and then, by golly, no one would ever even know I was working on my opus novel.

Yes, I promise to complete those incomplete chapters. I will make them whole and they will sing like Caruso. I will make time. Because this matters.

Thank you for reading. If you're so inclined, please subscribe to stay tuned for future chapters -- if I ever get around to them (I will).

Your confidante on this voyage,
Bruce Hidemi Sakow