Mark Albin
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Autumn has come to the Northeast of Switzerland. The colors are delightful, the air is clear and crisp, and the Säntis Mountain is capped with snow again. I truly love my first season of autumn here.
Just last week, I was basking in a much warmer place, on the coast of Portugal. The vastness of the ocean, the smell of salt water and feeling it on my skin, the intense motion of wind, waves, and clouds, the vivid sunsets, and the stars at night penetrated my being. I moved slower and felt deeply connected to all the natural elements. My early October was a potent period of vitalization.
I also took my first surfing lesson. My wife surfed for many years and she wanted to get back into it. Yes, I grew up in Southern California near the beach, so one could assume surfing for me would be like playing soccer for Germans. But, I loved other sports and had never attempted to ride a wave with a board. Friends in Corona del Mar high school would surf before school and sleep during most of their classes during the day. I remember well, seeing their happy exhaustion, their heads resting on their desks, even snoring in class. The teachers couldn’t do much about it!
If I would wake up early in the morning, I would study. I wanted to go to university. My friends wanted to enjoy their lives fully where they were. I felt they were courageous. I envied them, even their snoring.
After my first few hours in the waters off the Alentejo coastline, I was extremely tired and sore. I took a second lesson a few days later and was much more relaxed. I also had less soreness afterwards. I think it was because I learned a couple things, and those things apply to life in general, so I want to write about them.
In my last blog, I wrote about lingering in neutral. There certainly seemed to be no time to remain passive when trying to catch a wave that first day. I tried to do everything right.
Paddle
Push – up when you have the wave
Raise and stabilize back leg
Get up, bend your legs and don’t look down!
Well, I never made it out of the white-water, but the Atlantic offers good push in the white-water, so I did have some rides. And what I had to learn that was really important and not easy: to look up when I paddled, to look towards the beach in the direction I was going throughout the entire process. But most importantly, to wait, to feel the wave taking me before acting. Indeed, a paddling-lingering in neutral was required!
On that first day, it was far too easy to worry about my technique, about the weak right knee, about the placement of the foot, about my lack of practicing enough push-ups the last months, all of which made it impossible to get a decent ride. I kept orienting downwards towards my weaknesses and looking down. And, I fell, and fell, and fell. The board flew, and flew, and flew. I had some fun, but it was very strenuous. My tanned, longhaired surfing teacher Diogo just kept saying, “Don’t look down. It will be easier.”
The second experience two days later was much different. I tried not to worry so much about what my body was doing and focused on ‘feeling down’, feeling for the wave to take me while looking forward. I gazed and trusted that my body below would follow. And, good stuff happened rather easily, I was up and was able to catch a few rides to shore. It was almost too easy. It was as if the Atlantic Ocean took me along for a ride. It guided me. It wanted me to have some fun. My surfing attempts didn’t always work out like poetry in motion, but the experienced moments of stability were clear.
Something important lies in what I experienced in Portugal. I am indeed planning to do some push-ups regularly and surf again soon. But what is more important for me today is to reflect on how this attitude of waiting, relaxing, and trusting, of looking forward with my head up in the present and not down in deliberations of right and wrong, strong and weak, good and bad, past and future, allowed me to feel the support of a bigger force. There was a power present that could take me along and allow me to become upright rather easily. I could glide, smile, and enjoy.
In America, elections are coming. In the Middle East, there is catastrophic war happening with more conflict on the way. Here in Europe, a long drawn-out battle sucks billions of dollars out of people’s pockets and damages millions of lives. As a collective, much of humanity lives in very tense times.
Our individual lives have unavoidable challenges. The body ages, we see friends and family with illnesses. People we care about have difficult situations to work through, needy of support. It is easy to look down, to blame others, or to feel frustrated, overwhelmed, and helpless.
But, yes, we still try to stand up and help the world. We do our best. With all our physical and emotional weaknesses, our habits of distraction, our imperfect personalities, we try to keep looking forward, attention up and forward, and trust. We have the ability to get up, find our flow, and help others get up and find their flow as well. We want people in this world to feel this resilient trust, this gliding, this enjoying of life. Ultimately, we want to have the courage to get out there again and connect to this bigger power that can then carry us (and others) in the direction we are meant to go, no matter how many times we crash and splash.
I think my high school friends would be surprised to know that I went surfing. I still admire them, and hope they are able to surf the challenges of life with the confidence they had on those early mornings many years ago. I hope you can too!
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Wonderful landscapes continue to bring delight to my senses here in Switzerland. Mountains, lakes, forests, rivers, green fields, but also gardens full of tall, bright flowers, traditional farm houses, and small groups of meandering cows catch the eye and please it.
When I contemplate why that is, what it means to see and feel beauty and connection, I often consider whether the lack of violent conflict this country has experienced in the modern era allows the resonance of natural peace in myself and in the Nature around me to be expressed in a stronger way.
Peace – if we don’t know it within ourselves, how should we know how it can manifest among hostile communities and countries in the world? Do we know it with our families, with our co-workers, or with our neighbors? How do we experience it, recognize it ,and share it? I have wanted to understand this for a long time.
Switzerland is known for its government being neutral. According to constitutional law, they will not take up arms in a conflict between two nations at war. The Swiss themselves often mention this, and often they add a few comments to share that they are aware of awkward compromises their governments were responsible for in the past while still calling themselves ‘neutral’. But, I also note a pride concerning the attitude of neutrality that permeates the Swiss mindset. For many Swiss people, perhaps the majority, it is common sense to think that interfering when two are having a problem is not so smart, and that peaceful solutions are possible
Peace. As an American, that is a word that feels outdated, a hippie ideal. But no, I know that millions of Americans are dedicated to this cause. To support it, I suggest that benefits arise from this characteristic of neutrality, such as being able to live together on this planet. I sense it here in Appenzellerland, in the quality of my life, and in the quality of the people I meet here daily. What does it mean to be neutral?
There is a deeper meaning to neutrality for the individual. It doesn’t mean just not taking sides. It doesn’t mean always being calm with a Buddha-like smile on our faces. It’s not a state of stoic non-feeling. Neutrality is clear-minded awareness that a variety of perspectives exist. When we are not clinging to our private world of inner arguments and justifications, likes and dislikes, friends and enemies, and deeply interested in human beings before opinions fog over our intuitive power, we are capable of naturally entering an energetic state of neutrality, which is not stagnation or mere passivity. We don’t mix things up. Neutrality allows things to stay organic, to grow, to calm down, to heal, and to become powerful.
It is there in a car, that big ‘N’. Almost every car I have driven in Japan and Europe have been stick-shift. Here, we consciously shift into the other gears, but we don’t manage it without tapping into that neutrality for at least a moment. Cars without a stick-shift seem to skip neutral, and almost all cars I drove in the USA are automatic. An article about cars in Google even tells me that ‘Neutral’ is a dangerous gear in automatic cars. You lose control. But I like to linger a bit in Neutral when I drive my stick-shift car here in Europe. It feels good not to be in gear all the time.
Isn’t it about time to give space for ‘neutrality’? Not primarily in the political sense, but in the physical, psychological, and energetic sense. A tree has branches. We identify the tree by its leaves and flowers, and by the shape of its branches. But what is really giving that wonderful tree life? What is the source of beauty here? Light, water, and oxygen enter the tree through the leaves and bark, but the movement and transformation of those elements into energy has to connect to the roots somehow. For this, it goes over the middle, the stem, the trunk, the gut, and the heart. This is the unseen neutral zone, where nothing is easily visible or palpable to our senses, but where actually everything has to move through to get authentic movement and power. We human beings function like this, animals too.
We humans can get in touch with these inner movements. We can observe, support, and enhance them. However, in our history, though we Euro-Americans claim to be individualists, we often give over our observational and intuitive powers to rash actions, explanations, and the advice of the experts. In the complexity of it all, we can lose faith that we are capable of sensing deeply what is going on inside us. Decisions become very difficult. We sit on one branch of our tree and lose a sense of connection to all the others on our individual tree, and then to our collective forest.
The internal dilemma becomes the external dilemma. It happens everywhere. Many of us Americans may be facing a dilemma, a sense of stagnation. We so much want to know, to go, to lead, to get somewhere that is really wonderful. It’s frustrating these days.
In the article I referred to about auto transmission, it says, “Use Neutral when your car is stuck.” I like this sentence. When things are not moving smoothly, to come back to neutral, to inhale, to stop forcing things into one gear or another, to observe things, to loosen up. Where are things moving on their own?
This neutrality is not giving up. We learn trust, and trust is a wonderful thing to feel. It lifts our spirits. We regenerate and are ready to approach great difficulties with courage and creativity. And those virtues are not cultivated by an exhausted or ‘driven’ thinking mind. They arise from connection to our whole being, to our roots as energetic living beings, very much a part of all other living beings. At the core, love lives. And from here, I, an American, want to see the world, from here I want to work with and for others, from here I want to enjoy my life.
I hope to get better at accessing neutrality, not judging, not forcing, not tampering where I don’t need to, and hopefully I can share the resulting vitality and optimism I feel with my family, my beloved Americans, and with the world.
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So much natural beauty around here! As the Japanese saying goes, ‘Where I am is the dojo’; where I am consciously and experiencing whatever I have learned, practiced, understood, and seen. Harada Roshi, my Zen Master, used to make a rolling motion with his hands and repeat in his deep voice, “Washing mind, washing mind.”
I often have to smile these days. I am deeply touched by the magical clarifying powers experienced on each new hike in the local mountains in our corner of Switzerland. It’s nice to live in a beautiful place. I grew up near Disneyland in Southern California, also a place where people seek and perhaps find happiness. I think I went there fifty times or so. But, as a youth and young man, I didn’t find it easy to smile, not at Disneyland, not for a camera, and certainly not in front of a mirror. I had a very serious inner life, filled with doubts about myself, the state of the world, and later, the state of my country. For various reasons, it was more scary than satisfying to think about my future or the future of mankind.
It is a long story of happenstances that brought me now to this this country known for its cows, cheeses, and banks. And for its Nature! Many people have come to Switzerland for refuge, and maybe I have as well. The Nature does inspire clarity of mind. Does clarity lead to happiness?
Some of the people that have revolutionized my life in early years and still inspire me through their clear expression are from this country or have spent years here. They were rare minds and are heroic figures for me. I name some of them:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva and awoke to a deeper connection with Nature on Lake Biel. His Noble Savage inspired me to quit college in 1981 and head to the Matterhorn in the southeast of Switzerland (I found the place much colder than expected and returned to UCLA humbled and intent to learn German.)
Frederick Nietzsche, who I discovered as a student of History at UCLA , helped me (and many others) to raise the intensity of my thinking ‘beyond good and evil’. He lived out the last chapter of his life in Sils-Maria and was fond of seeking out such energetic hotspots to support his thinking and writing.
Hermann Hesse also left his homeland of Germany for Switzerland and did all he could in his writings from Montagnola near Lake Lugano to convince early 20th Century Germans to be better than mere soldier-pawns. Those men weren’t able to listen, but later generations were more determined after reading him to aspire to a deeper vision of life and reject catering to materialistic and militaristic trends. I listened.
Rudolf Steiner brought revolutionary and practicable insights to the fields of medicine, agriculture, education, and art. His ‘inclusive’ communities were important resources of information for me on my path of social work. He built the mecca/center to his anthroposophic movement in Dornach. His teachings of human history have also expanded my understanding of evolution and progress immensely.
Jiddu Krishnamurti turned my life upside down when I was sixteen with the book ‘You Are the World’, sharing his critical, compassionate, and uncompromising views from his lucid mind. He came to Saanen, Switzerland regularly from 1961 – 1985 to speak, but also to rejuvenate. I was able to attend two talks of Krishnamurti in Ojai, California and the clarity of his presence still touches me. He was the first living evidence I experienced beyond books that silence is alive and that a human being can live a truly deep and beautiful life.
Mario Mantese, Master M is a very special present-day wisdom teacher who left his home in Switzerland as a young man to be a bass player for the pop-funk band Heatwave. After having gained profound insights in a near-death experience, he began to write and offer teachings all around the world. He resides in Western Switzerland. I have the good fortune to attend his gatherings and have translated some of his books with the aspiration to resonate more deeply with his teachings of ‘pure love’. Mario and the work of Master M prove to me daily that one can have a ‘normal’ life in the world while deepening one’s spiritual life. Light and love are our foundation, and we can live from it.
These are some of my mentors. I find them remarkable and they continue to remind me how big and clear the mind can be. They have helped me to ask good questions and to angle my mind/heart in good directions. They reflect to me that one single life can be significant. To experience deep qualities of the human heart and share them is to help humanity move beyond the crudities and cruelties that still hold the collective human condition down in defensive survival modus most of the time.
It feels good to be in Switzerland and see myself smiling honestly. We certainly don’t need to smile all the time, but I hope you are able to feel your mind is clear, that you can smile naturally and share what’s behind it wherever you are. The places and the people who loved and inspired you live through that smile. It’s beautiful!
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My wife and I recently took a magnificent walk in the mountains. The feeling of content known to many after climbing a steep path and arriving at a clear lake was mine as well on this day. The grandeur and majestic stillness of the powerful Alpstein massifs elevated my spirit. I felt easily connected to my breath and to the earth. At the same time, I felt a fondness for all the living beings on it, especially the mountain toads who continually popped their eyes above the surface of the water as if hoping for a conversation.
I drank a bowl of matcha with my wife that day at the shore of the Fählensee (a lake up among the peaks of Appenzell where we live) which enhanced my heart and senses with even more fresh energy. A power within sunk down with the green tea into the water of the lake. My eyes seemed to expand beyond the margins of my physical body, absorbing the powerful emanations from the snow-capped peaks lined by the feathery clouds in the April sky. What a fantastic space to and inhale and absorb this magnificent existence!
I mentioned in my first writing of this blog that helping others was important to me. I also ask myself, what really helps? How do we really help others? I can enjoy this moment by the lake very much, but when I leave, can I really help anyone in this complex world?
I found myself a ‘helper’ very young, as an attendant to my older brother Michael, who was afflicted with Duschenne muscular dystrophy. Pushing his wheelchair, massaging his legs, and carrying his weakened body to a toilet or to a bed were jobs that became very natural to me by the age of 12. In this intimate realm of brotherhood, I felt very useful and connected to someone I loved.
It wasn’t always fun to be the helper. As children and teenagers, my brother and I were constantly arguing. But I never wanted him to suffer. While carrying him, I may have unintentionally banged his foot on a doorway or twisted his ankle a bit hard to get a shoe off. But we both preserved the realm of trust. My hold was gentle but very firm, and Michael never complained about my work. He often thanked me.
When I first heard of Michael’s diagnosis, I wanted to save him. His disease was fatal. He would die between 14 – 20 years-old. I thought I could do something to change or improve the situation. I think this is the root of my search, my desire to help human beings transcend the grim prospects of illness and death.
It is easy now to for me to see how Buddhism appeared in my life. I also see what a tremendous support the teachings and practices have been. The Buddha saw the human condition as suffering unless this transcendence of attachment to the body and its end was consciously experienced. That is the path of the Bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism, one who longs to improve the human condition through awareness and realization, and wants to share it. There is more to existence than life and death, and this awareness can transform our being from being completely self-centered, to living more and more in a heart-connection to all that lives.
When I reflect on those moments of intimacy and mutual support during my childhood as Michael’s assistant, I see that they were short, quiet meditations, focused rhythmic dances that imbued both of us with a larger confidence in the significance of life. We loved and we trusted. That is how I felt at the lake with my wife and the frogs.
It wasn’t easy to find that sense of connection to myself or another person since those years with my brother. And yet, something has shifted over time and good things have happened. The longing for transcendence is no longer something I expect to satisfy through reading a book or attending a workshop, by traveling to another country, or by meeting another person. Transcendence arises from within, pacifying the brain’s tendency to worry, solve, fix, and compensate. I experience anger, tears, and pain, but a light continues to connect me to those I miss, those I have lost.
Michael left this world in 1985. He was an extremely intelligent and generous person, but he was not able to avoid the viciousness of his disease, dying at the age of 24. During his life, I think there was healing. I sense Michael’s presence now as a ray of light that shines through my own person. I would like to write more about Michael soon.
My family story probably caused me to have a ‘helper-syndrome’. But with some real help from others who know transcendence very profoundly, I can embrace the ‘helper’ – path that brought me to this moment in these glorious mountains by the lake with my lovely wife and the curious frogs. It is a moment like those trusting, intimate moments I knew from childhood with my brother Michael. The chance to share such moments is very satisfying.
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I feel a lot of Spirit in the air here in the corner of Switzerland I call my new home. I feel something familiar, something like the Spirit of Zen. It is a good feeling and I will try to describe it.
What do I mean by Zen? A metaphoric comparison of Zen and Jodo Shinshu Buddhism is helpful. Jodo Shinshu attracts a much larger portion of devotees in Japan than Zen does. In Jodo Shinshu Buddhism, one should repeat the name of an important deity three time each day. If you manage that, when your body goes, you enter the Western Paradise. You are in; just say those words and have faith.
Zen takes another approach to reach spiritual heights. It also requires daily dedication, but the center of devotion is mindful living. And to induce mindfulness, the Zen training lifestyle is in many ways strenuous. It is like climbing the steep mountain, accepting the scratches, bruises, and blood, until you have a momentary view at the top that you have worked hard for, exhausted yourself for, sacrificed for. You breathe a deep breath and may even feel like you have become the mountain.
And then, the sound of a motor interrupts your haiku moment. A large bus appears. There is a paved road up the mountain, and a shuttle bus glides up to meet you at the peak. The vehicle is full of happy Jodo Shinshu people. They are waving out the window. When they exit the bus, they seem delighted to be up there. We share the view, the air, the mountain.
I don’t know what a Jodo Shinshu devotee knows, but the Zen practitioner full of mountain energy feels into the body and breath of Nature and senses a vital connection to life. You want to use the life-energy you feel to serve living beings. It feels like the only thing to do.
I studied religions and philosophies in college and went to Asia looking for spiritual understanding in 1985 with a desire to help make myself and the world better. That was forty years ago.
I found a powerful Zen Master in Okayama, Japan and stayed with him for a long time. I loved my life with Shodo Harada Roshi. Zen culture as embodied in the master has something that is hard to look away from, a vigilance that is subtle and quiet and at times harsh and dominant. It is like that strong mountain, a sight we are excited and even awe-struck to witness as it appears on the horizon. As we get closer, it calms and even straightens our minds. But, its authority demands our attention, almost against our will.
That is how it starts to feel here in Waldstatt. My wife and I moved here at the beginning of 2024, and the closer I get to the formidable Säntis Mountain, and the longer I stay, the more intensity I feel. Our surroundings are beautiful. The Apenzeller countryside is so picturesque one often thinks one lives inside a painting. Could this really be a possible longer landing spot for the next chapter of my life?
When I started my journey in 1985 on a one-way ticket to Japan, I had no idea what awaited me. I certainly never expected to live in a beautiful 300-year-old temple and become a Zen Buddhist monk. I shaved my head and wore robes. We worked hard and didn’t sleep much. When I ordained, I thought I had found my calling. My teacher named me DoYu, the one on the path of helping. I never imagined that I would leave temple life behind me.
I left for a pilgrimage to India with my robes in 2003 to ask questions. I had no ticket back to Japan. I ended up in a 300 year-old mill in the Bavarian countryside that became a support center for children and families. I tried to help everyone there too. I carried the robes, but never wore them. I slowly adapted to hair and lay outfits. Money and relationships were tremendous challenges.
I have come to Switzerland with my wife and I doubt we will leave soon. The energy of the Säntis mountain is so strong that it is impossible for me to sleep with my head facing it. The stick is used in a Zen temple to keep monks awake, and the mountain here seems to insist that I don't let my mind become vague.
Yes, our house is about 300 years old. Yes, I will look for ways to help people here, but don’t know what form my work will take. But I will start this period in Switzerland with a trust that has become stronger over the different chapters of my life. The Säntis mountain communicates to me like a formidable Zen Master. Its deep voice says, “Serve your wife and the people around you. Be awake, be intense, be yourself. I am here, and so are you. Come closer. Do you finally see that you and I are not different?”