Tenshi's coming out

Tenshi comes out. Beyond gay terms, Tenshi takes the place of Holy Shi Tzu, the happy monkey tree sack buddha from the cordilleras of my homeland who has gone ahead, like lost or left behind on the trails. Tenshi means messenger from heaven in Japanese. The icon is a representation of the monks who are called "tenshin" at the Yokoji Zen Mountain Center near Idyllwild. 

In Zen  Buddhism terms, Tenshi comes out in search of the bull.

"In the pasture of this world, I endlessly push aside the tall grasses in search of the bull. Following unnamed rivers, lost upon the interpenetrating path of distant mountains, my strengths failing me and my vitality exhausted, I cannot find the bull. I only hear the locusts chirping through the forests at night."

The glorious Holy Shih Tzu started off as one of my "traveling gnomes", a corny mimicry of a plot in Amelie, the movie.  The lowly happy monkey tree sack Buddha  took  the place of Pha Khin Phat who happened to be left behind from road trip in 2013. With the glorious  Holy Shih Tzu, the inglorious wanderer had started digging the world wide web for facts and background about the trails explored or just visited  for more shit and bull blog posts featuring the happy monkey-tree sack Buddha in photos.

"Along the river bank under the trees, I discover footprints! Even under the fragrant grass, I see his prints. Deep in remote mountains they are found. These traces no more can be  hidden than one's nose looking heavenward."

With Pha Khin Phat left behind, the glorious Holy Shih Tzu gone and Tenshi's coming out metaphor, it's really this  inglorious wanderer perceiving all the cock and bull of moving on.  With no apologies to any  Buddhist who have revered Tomikichiro Tokuriki, a famous modern woodblock artist in Kyoto who illustrated Ten Bulls poems, let me quote the third verse about perceiving the bull.

"I hear the song of the nightingale. The sun is warm, the wind is mild, willows are green along the shore, here no bull can hide. What artist can draw the massive head, those majestic horns?"

Up until now, I have no idea how the glorious Holy Shih Tzu got left behind at the Garnet Peak Trail at Mount Laguna. Sometimes, I have this hope that he would just turn up one day, buried under some pile of crap in the garage. On other days, I had  hoped that the happy monkey-tree sack Buddha have been found  up by a PCT thru hiker and  brought him on his or her backpack  all the way to the Canadian border.

In my terms, I have caught more bull that I could handle. 

"I seize him with a terrible struggle . His great will and power are inexhaustible. He charges to the high plateau far above the cloud-mists, or in an impenetrable ravine he stands."

Spring has just sprung and wildflowers are in bloom.  It is a perfect timing for Tenshi's coming out. Wildflowers, to me, are likened to tamed bulls. Flowers are innately tame, they could never be wild.

"The whip and rope are necessary. Else he might stray off some dusty road. Being well trained, he becomes naturally gentle. Then unfettered, he obeys his master."

Tenshi's coming out, not from the closet but into the trails, is celebrated not with a rainbow flag but with wildflowers. The seemingly tame wildflowers are possibly  called cream cups or Platystemon Californiacus. Google could never be definite with wildflower names. Stanley Plumly, an American poet, on the other hand memorialized himself on a poem entitled "Wildflowers".

"Some--the one with fish names--grow so north they last a month, six weeks at most.

Some others, named for the fields they look like last longer and smaller."

The wildflowers are called California goldfields. They bloom where God plant them. Contrary to the popular saying  "Bloom where you are planted", Tenshi could only transcend.  And for a transplant like this inglorious wanderer, I am plucked!

Wildflowers like  baby's blue eyes flowers make great pollinators. Buddhist give significance to pollinators for the important role they play in maintaining balance in the ecosystem. Ecosystem is the biological interchange of both animal and plant kingdom.  Pollination which happens when pollen are carried from flower to flower by wind, water or pollinating animals such as bees, bats, butterflies among others constitute the miracles that Gautama Buddha referred when he said: "If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole would change."

"I am serene, the bull too can rest.  The dawn has come. In blissful repose, within my thatched dwelling, I have abandoned the whip and rope."

In Buddhism, nirvana is transcendent state in which there is neither suffering, desire nor sense of self and the subject is released from the effects of karma and the cycle of death and rebirth. Somehow, I envied  the pony-tailed guru for the innate serenity he showed while he taught us the basics of zazen. 

"Too many steps have been taken returning to the root and the source. Better to have been blind or deaf from the beginning! Dwelling in one's true abode, unconcerned with that without.The river flows tranquilly on and the flowers are red."

The 9th verse of the Ten Bulls or Ten Ox Herding poems illustration used in the Zen tradition to describe the stages of a wanderer's progress toward enlightenment coincides  with my annual trek to visit the eagle rock and going by myself for the first time and marking the visit with Tenshi's coming out.  Majestic as had always been, the eagle rock was once sanctified by native Americans that are now referred to as the Pala Band of Mission Indians for rituals that included eagle ceremonies to send off their dearly departed to outer space. The native Americans who were the first known inhabitants of the once fertile valleys were driven out of the area after a failed uprising in 1903.