Incredibly we heard the news from Fr. Isaiah — Hermitage guest master — that the New Camaldoli community was evacuated again, under threat of fire. Never before in these fifty years has the community had to leave the place twice in a season (or even twice in successive years).

I give you the latest posting from www.InciWeb. org/

Incident: Chalk Wildland Fire
Released: 11 hrs. ago (Sunday, October 19, 8:00 p.m.)

CHALK FIRE UPDATE

Fire Statistics

Acres burned: 14,666

Miles of fireline to build: 7.5

Date started: 9/27/08 (evening)

Percent contained: 79%

Expected containment: 11/01/2008

Firefighter injuries to date: 17

Structures threatened: 49

Structures destroyed: 0

Suppression cost to date: $18.2M

Firefighting Resources

Crews: 8

Engines: 25

Helicopters: 11

Air tankers: 10

Dozers: 4

Total personnel assigned: 601

Current Status: The firing operation which started about noon today was successful. Crews started from the dozer line approximately 2 miles north of the New Camaldoli Hermitage and burned south along the dozer line. As of this afternoon the firing had almost reached the Hermitage. Crews will continue with the firing operation into this evening as long as there is still opportunity to burn. Crews supported by helicopters and air tankers worked to hold the ridge NW of Twin Peak parallel with the Carizzo Trail. In the Limekiln State Park area, the fire is backing down slowly.

Tonight crews will continue to hold and support the firing operations. Structure protection continues in Limeklin State Park and the Hermitage. Cool temperatures and good relative humidity with light winds should result in minimal perimeter growth. Along the coast, below 1,500 ft. the marine layer will continue to be temperatures cool and moist throughout the night. Firefighter and public safety continue to be the highest priority.

Evacuations: On Friday, October 17, The Monterey County Sheriff's Department issued an EVACUATION WARNING for Limekiln State Park north to the New Camaldoli Hermitage. Approximately 9 residents are within the evacuation area. This stage of Evacuation Warning is given for affected areas where there is imminent threat to life and property. Persons who receive notification of this warning should evacuate in accordance with the direction given to them by Sheriff's Department Deputies who are on scene.

An EVACUATION WATCH was also issued by the Monterey County Sheriff's Department for Lucia north to Lopez Point. This stage of Evacuation Watch is for areas where a threat to life and property exists. Persons who receive notification of this watch are not required to evacuate but should be prepared to evacuate should an Evacuation Warning be issued. Significant resources (hand crews, engines and dozers) are engaged in structure protection.

Highway, Road and Area Closures: Highway-1 is open. Nacimiento-Fergusson Road remains closed, as well as South Coast Ridge Road, south to Willow Creek Road.

Last Sunday, Arthur and I (from the monastery in Berkeley) joined the parade in Oakland from where the old Catholic cathedral used to be (at 21st Street and San Pablo, ruined by the 1993 earthquake) to the new one overlooking Lake Merritt. A great melange of ethnic groups singing, dancing, and drumming (Koreans, Native Americans, Filipinos, Hispanics, Brazilians and what not), we marched the six blocks to the new Cathedral, under the eyes of other Sunday congregations along the way (True Faith Baptist Church had people on the steps watching). This was the first liturgical ceremony in the new building, which is now open to the general public, and I think they will be giving guided tours at some times. The ceremony included a beautiful gesture of pouring different waters into the baptismal pool: from the River Jordan, from Saint Peter's in Rome, from the healing pool at Lourdes in France, and from Lake Merritt itself (!) along with water from each of the 84 parishes in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

Wayne Teasdale and I were in correspondence over a number of years. We met in the U.S. and at Shantivanam, the ashram in India where both he and I, on different occasions, were initiated into sannyasa (India’s order of renunciants) by Swami Dayananda, better known as Bede Griffiths. We were also together in 1993, at the “"Parliament of World Religions” held in Chicago to commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of the first, major interreligious gathering in human history (although ardently dreamed of, in the fifteenth century, by Nicholas of Cusa in his theological fantasy, De Pace Fidei).

At the Parliament, Wayne and I wore our orange robes, meditated together, and jointly conducted a memorial service for Dom Bede, who had passed away on May 13 of that year. Bede, Wayne, and I shared the conviction that the ancient and medieval traditions of Christianity, rethought through the great mystics, can be the basis for our participation in an “interspiritual dialogue” in which meditators and mystics of different traditions meet “in the cave of the heart” (a favorite expression of Swami Abhishiktananda, known outside India as Henri Le Saux). Few people are aware that the first Parliament of Religions (Chicago, 1893) was attended by a Catholic delegation, headed by a theologian sent by the Archbishop of Baltimore.

The 1993 Parliament had Brother Wayne and a Benedictine monk of Saint Procopius Abbey on its board of trustees. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin attended the closing ceremony, at which the major speaker was the Dalai Lama. Eleven years later, Brother Wayne entered into endless day at the age of 59. The following video is the last of a series taped shortly before his transitus. Study the interaction between the two speakers. I am sure Ken Wilber would agree with me that, on this occasion, Wayne was speaking directly from the depths of a personal realization of the great Self.

May we all share Wayne’s eternal joy in the one, infinite light.

Slowly I am reading the essays posted by Brace Alderman, James Barrow, Matt Segall, and others. The reading of these essays is my first initiation into Enactivism (I am taking the term from Varela to cover the thought of several authors who are re-investigating the epistemological basis of science). To aid my own understanding (and maybe that of others), I have lifted a few important phrases from Matt Segall’s essay and recast them into short aphorisms. Please, all, tell me if I have misunderstood anything here.

Whoever speaks, speaks as an observer. The language shared by speaker and listeners brings forth a world of shared significance. Even when the speaker does not intend to self-refer explicitly, this self-reference is always implicit in the discourse. The content of the discourse is a description (partial or total) of the world we share with others. Our descriptions amount to consensual agreements about the nature of what we observe together. Our language is a social activity embedded in a particular historical situation and in the pre-understanding (if not prejudices) of speaker and listeners.

Questions: To what extent, and how, does our description relate to "an independent reality outside the one we constitute with and for each other"? Physicists describe the world in terms of atoms and subatomic particles; is this irrelevant to true knowledge? Or is it only irrelevant to the non-scientific concerns of speaker and listeners, e.g., questions of life and death? Ultimate question: How does Enactivism avoid the pitfall of Idealism and the slide toward solipsism?

My suggestions: Any description of the shared world is partial, even when we mean our description to refer to the whole. There is so much that we do not, and perhaps can not, observe and know. We know together, and that is necessary for our knowledge to have any basis in reality. But we still know only in part. “Critical Realism” is an epistemology that recognizes the partiality of all knowing but also recognizes that there is some “basis in reality — fundamentum in re” for our knowing, thanks to the multiplicity of observers and their shared consensus about reality.

My difficulties: Any consensus among two or more observers is bound up with culture, the nature of language, private interests, and even emotional issues. Culture, language, interests, and emotions can all diminish the accuracy of our observations and the value of our discourse in relation to the ”basis in reality.” Does this problem — the diminution of accuracy — arise only in discourses about "human affairs" (politics, religion, the arts, love relationships, psi phenomena, etc.), or does it also arise in scientific discourses? To what extent are scientific reductionism and the mechanistic model of the material universe the consequence of cultural and even political biases, rather than being the pure attitude of unprejudiced observers of reality “as it really is”?

So should I be allowed to understand Maturana’s and Varela’s “objectivity-in-parenthesis” in terms of the classic “critical realism”? Some affirmation of realism in our limited and partial knowing seems necessary in order to avoid Idealism and, ultimately, solipsism. That is, we can speak only about what we know, what seems to us to be true, and cannot identify our description with what really is “out there,” but at the same time, in virtue of our shared embodiment in the universe and the language we share in describing it, we can rest assured that we are standing somewhere, and not nowhere. We neither presume to be an objective observer, isolated in our omniscient void, nor despair of coming to any authentic knowledge of what really is.

The “scandal” of the biological sciences lies in the fact that “a widely-agreed-upon definition for the central object of study, life, has yet to be produced.” You could say that the scandal is enormous, because it is largely unconfessed.

Two years ago, I attended a small symposium in Spain organized by the physicist Dr. Paul Gailey of the University of Michigan with the Fetzer Memorial Trust. The symposium gathered around the venerable figure of Dr. Raimon Panikkar, a scholar in intercultural studies and interreligious theology. The overarching theme was “Science and Spirituality,” but an important sub-theme was “life.” Dr. Pierluigi Luisi, professor emeritus of the Zurich Polytechnic Institute, sustained that life is bracketed between microbes, at the bottom, and humans, at the top. Viruses, lacking DNA, are out, and as for the trans-human, or higher intelligent beings, the absence of proof for their existence is taken as proof of absence. I do not remember if Rollie Stanich, a collaborator of Ken Wilber, raised any objection. Panikkar certainly did, as did I. The arbitrary nature of the microbial floor and the anthropic ceiling in describing life seemed clear to me, but not to others.

What does seem clear to me, is that the entire universe is living and is in some way a living organism. Why do I think so? Because what is called abiogenesis, the emergence of cells and nucleic acids from preceding, non-biotic entities — and I agree with the common descriptions of it — seems to demand an intrinsic tendency (classically called “potency”) within matter to coagulate into complex structures that Maturana calls “autopoietic.” While I have a certain difficulty in translating this term literally as “self-producing” — nothing in the universe has been shown to have produced itself — I accept the notion expressed by the term as a good description of living beings. Permit me, with a wink, to translate the term as “self-poetic”: the unity distinguishes itself from the surrounding broth by making itself beautiful, by giving itself a rhythm, by dancing. I am not just playing with metaphors, but claiming to describe unicellular beings as I once observed them in an undergraduate biology course. Forgive my self-referencing here, but as it was said, such self-referencing is inevitable in every description shared through language.

Dare I say that the scandal of the absent definition of life itself is seconded by the scandal of consciousness reduced to an efflux of neuronal cells? It seems to me that life cannot be defined, because life or the potency for it exists at the very root of the universe. If I am not wrong here, then I can say that consciousness cannot be defined, because we are the consciousness, and not solely as individuals. The world is shared; language is shared; consciousness is shared, as Varela, Maturana, and others affirm. Forget psi for the moment: linguistic communication is mysterious enough, and the fact of it shows me the indefinability of the consciousness that spreads its observations abroad by means of language. Please, all, do not hesitate to challenge me on this point, because in spite of the declarative tone, I still call “tentative” any discourse about consciousness, since it cannot be defined by anything other than itself, not even by the firing of neurons that accompanies it. Or so it seems to me.

Matt’s breaking-down of Varela’s statement — “The fundamental logic of the nervous system is that of coupling movements with a stream of sensory modulations in a circular fashion” — was helpful. In Matt’s emphasizing the “active process” in perceiving the world — “We know the world by moving around within it” — he notes the misunderstanding of “perception” as “passive receptivity.” Maybe another term for the same process, coming from medieval thought, might shed light here: call it “simple apprehension,” a taking-hold of a part of the world we move in, without yet judging either the part or the whole. There is then time for judging, for the copula of “is” or “is not”; in the meantime we can engage in a kind of contemplative gazing on the question posed by the reality simply apprehended. Perhaps this gaze can help us to replace the part within the whole, before actuating the intellectual judgment of “is” or “is not.”

Am I getting off the subject here?

Wilber still derails my thinking. I hear him saying one thing, but reading on I find he is saying another. He slips out of the grasp of either my agreeing or disagreeing with him. Wilber complained that Christian De Quincey's objections to his thought were mostly ad hominem arguments. Maybe Wilber invites them by his style of reasoning. What do you think?

Matt’s concluding words about suffering were moving. I deeply respect the personal note in them, while giving myself the permission to ask, in a general way: “Is the fact that all we sentient beings suffer a proof that the universe is unfriendly?” I don’t think it is.

Enough for now. Like James, I acknowledge that someone with a musician’s mind may not succeed in harmonizing with high philosophy.

On Bruce Alderman's essay:

Let me preface the following observations by admitting that I have not yet read — apart from a few passages here and there — the works of Varela, Maturana, and others cited by Alderman (I have read some early books by Ken Wilber). Hence what I say may have already been covered in these works.

Alderman states: "According to the enactive paradigm, the representationist perspective is naïve and no longer can be sustained.  Using the example of color perception research, for instance, Varela, Lakoff, and other cognitive scientists point out that color is not a quality that exists ‘out there’ in the world; it is not an observer-independent, objective quality of things-in-themselves.  Rather, it is a particular experiential domain that emerges through the interaction of our color cones, our neural circuitry, our embodied history of structural coupling (our particular evolutionary trajectory in time and co-determinative relationship with our environment), the reflective properties of objects, and electromagnetic radiation."

A crucial element, which I would add to this statement, is the determining influence of artistic culture on the perception of color and of many other "qualities." In other words, humans began to experience colors when they learned to differentiate them through artistic representation (see the subtle and sophisticated use of an albeit limited color pallet in prehistorical cave paintings, e.g., Altamira and Lascaux). I claim a priority of artistic activity vis-à-vis other human activities in the world; there is no naked aesthesis (simple sensory apprehension) in the human which is not at least in germ an aesthetics of what is perceived. Names were given to specific colors consequent to the activity of reproducing them in artworks, or at least of representing them by similarly-colored objects. Even the color-coding of food became conscious because of the human effort to reproduce such and such a color. Hence also, children were instructed on the gathering of edible foods by showing them either the food itself or (e.g.) a flower petal having the same color. But this "showing" of colors was never solely utilitarian; archeological evidence of flower and bird-feather arrangements exists even in relation to pre-Homo Sapiens species (e.g., Neanderthal burial customs).

My narrating a cultural sequence of aesthesis-aesthetics-representation-instruction is not arbitrarily undertaken, nor is it based on a naive, constructivist notion of an observer-generated "reality." It is based on the intrinsic sociality of the human (humans are both social animals and culture-makers) and on the easily observed process of education in distinguishing and naming qualities, even in today's educative practice that employs technological means of reproducing and communicating such qualities, i.e., audiovisual media.

Hence while I do subscribe to the enactive paradigm that Alderman summarizes, I do not arrive at it through a dichotomization of biology-environment over against culture. If I am making a philosophical apriori assumption, it is in positing human artistic creativity at the heart of human consciousness itself, antecedent to the specialization of the arts. Every human is in some degree an artist. Artistic creation and fruition are not throw-away elements of human activity; they are necessary and obligatory for the formation of every human mind. It seems that the perception of art is even hard-wired: newborn infants are capable of distinguishing between music and random noise.

I might even dare to sustain that artistic culture in the human is biological, and that the environment of humans as such is not, nor can it be, a naked, "natural" environment, perceived independently of other humans and of human culture. We perceive qualities because we have art, and we have art because we are human. And both our humanity and our art are social, transactional realities. Of course, my audacious supposition finds comfort in Varela's affirmation, cited by Alderman, that "the mind is fundamentally a matter of imagination and fantasy." And I conclude that our "sensorimotor engagement with an environment" (Alderman, referencing Lakoff and Johnson) is initially and concomitantly a dance.

I might mention that Western spirituality also includes refined meditation practices that involve "sophisticated imagery and imaginal processes" no less than the cited Tantric practices (both of which I have referenced in my dissertation and several articles). I might even suggest that readers of Varela, Maturana, Jorge Ferrer, et al., could eventually become curious to know something of these authors' cultural background as found in Spain, especially in the Spanish mystics of the Renaissance as well as in the reflection on them by Thomas Merton and other contemporary Western mystics.

Today, as the Benedictine Order celebrates the Hospitality of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, the monks in Big Sur, at New Camaldoli, remember the fifty years of their community on this beautiful mountain sloping down into the Pacific Ocean. Last Sunday was the solemn liturgy for the occasion: both Missa and Mensa, Mass and Table Fellowship, with many catered courses, vegetarian, fish, and meat, with wines and sweets, and above all, happy conversation and remebrance of times present and past, especially of the monks who have gone before us in faith, hope, and love. We of the little Camaldoli of Berkeley drove down with the prior, the abbot, the assistant and all, to be part of the feast. Many friends were there, including those lay friends who have merited unending thanks for their generosity, from the beginnings of New Camaldoli to the present day.

Like incense, let our prayer rise before you...

The prior of the hermitage in Big Sur, Father Raniero, came up to Berkeley on Monday, as the other monks hosted by the Franciscan sisters at Soquel headed back down the coast to Big Sur. We also welcomed the abbot of the Camaldolese, Bernardino Cozzarini, arriving at SFO with his assistant Ivan Nicoletto, in California on visit to our two monasteries. Our constitutions require these visits or “visitations” of our communities in the months leading up to our chapters, held every three years. This year’s chapter is a mid-term meeting, a bit less formal and with no elections. But in any case, the climate is always more fraternal than formal, given the generally smaller communities we have, compared with other Benedictines.

Raniero filled us in on the Big Sur monks’ stay at Saint Clare’s Retreat in the Soquel redwood forest. They did have opportunities to work in the kitchen, especially on the days when the sisters’ regular cook was off duty, and they also washed dishes and pans and laundered sheets and towels. Raniero’s fifty-ninth birthday fell in the middle of last week, and was duly observed with a turkey (a rarity for the usually vegetarian monks) and a cake. But they were eager to return to the hermitage, grateful for the firefighters and the brothers who stayed back to watch over the place. Raniero, Bernardino, and Ivan left Berkeley for Big Sur this morning.

[The photo shows Prior Raniero with friends at the Big Sur hermitage.]

Friend and Camaldolese oblate Matt Fisher has sent us the latest on Tassajara. I summarize:

David Zimmerman, the director of Tassajara Buddhist monastery in Big Sur, tells us about the five members of the community, who stayed behind when the others were evacuated to Jamesburg. They report what they went through fighting the fires and the extent of the damage to both Tassajara itself and the surrounding land at http://www.sfzc.org/tassajara/display.asp?catid=4,209&pageid=1283. An amazing story, “Now that the fire has passed.” It concludes:

“Gratitude courses through this valley and our veins, for we and our community are well and safe, supported in a thousand ways known and unknown by the generosity and efforts of so many beings, so many bodhisattvas, so many buddhas. And finally, deep bows to the fire, whose undeniable dharma teaching of impermanence has earned our awed respect and attention.”
 
The fire continues to be very active on the east side of the valley where Tassajara is located, threatening even Jamesburg, the place where the other community members were evacuated. Information about the status of things is at http://thefirelane.blogspot.com/.

We monks in Berkeley are keeping in mind the fire situation, even though all we have of it here is some whisps of smoke blended with the Bay’s usual summer fog.

Here is the latest from the blog that you can reach through surfire2008.org (see also sittingwithfire.blogspot.com):

“The fire was a ‘happy fire’ today – crews were able to bring fire all the way to the top of the northern containment lines before humidities came up and they had to stop burning operations for the moment.  When conditions are more favorable they will be able to burn all the way down to the Los Padres dam, sealing off the threat to Carmel Valley. ... The road is opening south of Coast Gallery on Sunday morning [important news for our monks still evacuated from New Camaldoli to Soquel]. The Basin fire is not out – it’s still very active, though the west side is 90% contained.  The fire is just under the Observatory right now, but is laying down and they expect crews will save it. The fire did burn through Tassajara and four outbuildings were lost, but everyone is safe [one more shed has burned — however, the zendo and other major structures are intact]. Next steps are to continue burning the eastern line until the fire is fully contained.”

Grateful thoughts for all the firefighters and others, volunteers and professionals, who have been caring for persons, animals, and property through the fire. Prayer for all who have lost something or been injured, and for everyone's return to home, work, and life in Big Sur.

“Listen” is the first word of Benedict’s Rule for Monastics, a hearty attentiveness to a heartwarming message. There is fire in his Rule, someone has written recently.

Benedictines and Buddhists of Big Sur have been bending their collective ear to the message of this fire. We are learning. We Benedictines of New Camaldoli are not so close to the flames, but we are hearing their voices through the thoughtful blogs of our spiritual siblings at Tassajara. I share here, in temporal sequence, what you can find more fully at sittingwithfire.blogspot.com :

Yesterday, 7:31 p.m.
“Everyone who has stayed [at Tassajara] is safe and very tired. They plan to spend the night maintaining a watch for embers falling from the hills above. They report that the Tassajara grounds are an island of green in a sea of black. A testament to the recently installed sprinkler system and the twice daily irrigation of the site. The fire approached quickly from three sides shortly after 1pm and passed over Tassajara mercifully fast. The crew were able to move around outside the safe space and keep the sprinkler system working. Several small buildings were lost: the Bird House, the compost shed, the wood shed and the pool bathroom. The radio-phone and half of the lower garden were also destroyed.”

7:52 p.m.
“The President of Zen Center who had been intending to go to Tassajara, arrived with other senior staff and while they were considering whether to try to get into Tassajara we got news that the fire had crossed the road. A couple of people did try to drive up the road early Thursday morning and were turned back by CHP at the National Forest boundary.... We met as a group and discussed the situation and the lack of any answers to the plethora of questions we all have. After dealing with the immediate practicalities of where everyone wanted to sleep tonight we chanted the Enmei Jukku Kannon Gyo and the Fire Eko and then started to disperse.”

8:24 p.m.
“Almost all of Tassajara Road from the dozer lines to Tassajara has been burned. Tassajara itself is surrounded by black. ... The closures and evacuations will not be lifted until the fire is much less active and dangerous than it is this evening. We [evacuees from Tassajara] here at Jamesburg are behind a set of firelines that may be severely tested in the next couple of days if the forecast wind shift pushes the fire in this direction. This fire is still dangerous.”

11:00 p.m.
I summarize the very different news from http://surfire2008.wordpress.com/ , the blog of firefighters and others down along the highway and up into more inhabited areas: “The situation is approaching normality. The air is clearing, Big Sur businesses are getting ready to reopen.”

Highway 1 access may be restored soon — perhaps it already has been restored for residents, all the way down to the hermitage and Limekiln State Park. Our Camaldolese at Saint Clare’s Retreat will celebrate the Mass of Saint Benedict and take food with the other guests there, and maybe Saturday they will be able to return to New Camaldoli.