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Marinko arrives to listen to Djordje’s new high end speakers gifted him by a friend.  Although not a musician by trade, music is Marinko’s passion, along with bird songs, the rock band he belonged to at age fifteen that has reconstituted fifty years later, his son the rock guitarist, and his daughter the classic cellist who lives with a classic musician.  Marinko is an administrator for the Red Cross.  He retires next week.  He says things that are way beyond my comprehension about music, instrument pitch, tone, and timbre, and how these qualities in each instrument interact and are impacted by speakers.  He knows Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, and Leonard Cohen songs by heart.  He loves Mahler.  Loves Mahler.  Also his wife he loves.  Also tea.  And, as you may recall, Djordje is a tea master!

So after listening to Djordje’s speakers, and having a classic Saturday morning breakfast/brunch of fresh cucumber, carrots, cheese, bread, and yogurt purchased at the local farmer’s market early that AM we repair to the meditation room for tea.  Not just any tea, of course, but 52 year old (52 year old!) Oolong tea from the east facing side of the eastern coastal mountains of Taiwan, tea that costs 20$/gram … or about 60$/cup … and ought be made only with “soft” water, such as that we collected yesterday from a mountain spring. Even Thich Nhat Hanh has had tea prepared by Djordje.  Indeed, Djordje drinks from the very cup he says Thich Nhat Hanh drank from, says he did not accept that he was indeed a tea master until the day he served Thich Nhat Hanh tea.  These are not just any cups of tea.

Moreover, it is the perfect setting, this drinking tea, to have conversations about mind, monkey mind, unknown mind, ego, superego, the unconscious, reality which doesn’t exist, unreality (which apparently does exist), emptiness, form, and other illusions. 

And while not appropriate to a tea drinking ceremony if you’ve had enough of the “there is no reality” thread you can always turn your attention over a beer or coffee to politics, something generally viewed by Djordje and his cohort as both repulsive and an inevitable element of the human condition that leads inevitably, and inescapable, to some all-encompassing disaster, an upcoming fall off the cliff driven by crazy men not afraid to kill and the inescapable capitalist mind that contaminates us all as we sit in our capitalist created narrow mental prisons.  I’d like to leave you laughing here, dear reader, but unfortunately I cannot.  All of the land, and even the water, is being purchased by domestic and foreign capitalists, control over land and water is being consolidated in the hands of the few, there are no jobs, families are scattered and shattered and, as everywhere, the US supports all sides so that it inevitably wins, and schools and TV train us to be happy slaves.  

Thus even though life in Croatia seems good on the surface, underneath the surface there is much grief and despair, the same problems facing the majority of people in the US regarding income inequality, the 1%, and how the deck is stacked all virtually identical here. And while in the US it is conceivable (at least to some) that a grassroots coalition of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, immigrants, women, labor, the poor, the white left, the environmental activist community, etc. might unite to form a majority block that can confront the ruling class, in all lily white all Catholic Croatia where fears of reprisals are real, and memories of the horrible “Homeland” War strong and inhibiting, such an opportunity appears to be nil, and it is common to hear it said that there is no hope.  And even though the bread is spectacular, water bountiful, agricultural lands vast and fertile, the sense of community real, and some of their dogs the very most mindful and obedient dogs I’ve ever encountered, the sense of being trapped without options or the possibility of escape is part of the atmosphere.

So let us move away from this big pile of capitalist shit and instead visit what has to be the world’s biggest junk and resale shop right across the border in Bosnia.  That’s two border crossings, passport please, date stamping in and two border crossings, passport please, date stamping out.  I mean this shop, covering two whole floors of a huge abandoned factory, makes most Salvation Army thrift shops look like the corner grocer’s.  We’re talking football fields lined up end to end where between the 10 to 20 yard line is just wires and old computer parts, and the 20 to 30 skis and bicycles, then furniture, knickknacks, carpets, tchotchkes, tools, tires, machine parts, old records and CDs, umbrellas, thermoses, kitchenware, clothing, shoes and boots edging across the goal line into the end zone.  Naturally we find and buy junk we like – statues, calligraphy, rocks!!  Our total bill is under 10$s. 

As we are leaving I notice a rolled up machine made oriental carpet runner that looks vaguely interesting and that I hadn’t previously noticed.  We unwrap and unroll the runner to see if perhaps we might give it as a gift to someone.  And while the runner is nothing unusual, wrapped tightly inside the runner is a small absolutely gorgeous, truly old, tattered and worn hand-made Persian carpet.  I mean this rug is stunning even if it was thrown away as unsaleable.  And it is clear that the woman who wove the carpet was at the top of her craft.  The patterns are complex.  The colors are subtle.  The knotting just perfect.  Maybe 80 – 100 years old.  And what did we pay what for both rugs?  If you guessed more than 9$s you are wrong.  

A few quick other glimpses into life in Slovonian Croatia and then it is time to go.  One, the Jews, not any of whom remain except the bones of those interned in the deserted overgrown old Jewish cemetery, outside town, in the very beautiful, very separate little village that Jews were allowed to live in.  And the stores in town, still referred to by older residents of Nova Gradiska by the names of their former owners – Cohen’s, Baum’s, and Wechler’s.

Or of the few remaining Serbian churches that were not bombed and burned to the ground, pockmarked with bullet holes and shattered roofs, with tall trees now growing inside reaching from inside the walls left standing for the sun.

Of the struggling organic farmers.  The bees they raise which are dying.  The horses they save from death.  The dogs and cats.  Sage.  Tea!  Not far from the signs warning of the land mines still in the ground.

So please, be present my friends.  Be unified.  Train the mind.
We are all guests here and each guest is also the host.  There is no difference, reality is in the mind of nthe believer, who doesn’t exist.  Yet we are here, blessed and gifted.  Say it.  And be grateful, to Timmy the dog who has his bags packed and is ready to get on the bus with you.  And to Djordje – a promise fulfilled – who packs you lunch for the road and gives you a bottle of his favorite spring water.  Stretna put. 

Meeting Djordje – Nova Gradiska, Croatia

There is a dreamy quality to my rendezvous with Djordje, the almost Buddhist monk, tea ceremony and meditation master, at his home in Nova Gradiska, Croatia, something almost too real (if there can be such a thing), something so real as to be extraordinary, as if real is magical, which reality surely is.  Words are clearly insufficient in a setting where something called “I” is honestly wondering if he even exists. Where as if in a dream I am sitting in a field drinking tea made of individually rolled tea leaves.  Listening to the music of stones.  Wondering if I created the music or if the music created me?  Form is emptiness.  Emptiness is form.  There is no end to ignorance. 

Djordje speaks loudly and authoritatively to me.  He listens to me.  He argues with me.  He tells me how ignorant I am.  He commands that I listen only and not think of my answer.  We discuss consciousness, ego, mind, knowing, not knowing, wisdom.  We discuss politics, the real word, meditation, women, and bread.  Like every stupid man, I am perfect, Djordje tells me. 

Djordje announces we are going to visit his friend Djuka.  Naturally we take thermoses of hot water, tea leaves, a tea pot, and cups.  Djordje tells me he was 25 when he met Djuka who was then 40.  Djuka had been a priest, but saw through the hypocrisy and falseness of the teachings and took off the robes.  He lived as a hermit among some hill villagers near where we were now going.  Over time Djuka somehow gathered a following, initially young people who he educated.  Over time the community provided for Djuka.  Djuka wrote an important letter to his followers in 1985.  Djordje had a copy of the.  We arrive at our destination.  Djordje takes the letter and the bag with the tea from the car.  We walk into a cemetery, sit on a bench next to a grave with nothing but a simple wooden cross, and drink tea with Djuka who has been laying here for some time, even pour Djuka some tea, read aloud his letter, reflect on Djuka who had had a long torturous imprisonment at one time, talk about my beloved friend Alan Berkman who had had a long torturous imprisonment at one time.  Woodcutters on the hillside down talk trees which crash to the earth.  I ring the cemetery shrine bell, which, of course, I was not supposed to do.  Djordje expected nothing less.  Like every stupid man, I am perfect.

Meeting Djordje – Pine Hills, NY

Early in 2008 I have the irrefutably brilliant idea that I will go on a silent meditation retreat, something I have never done before (or since), and being the cautious conservative fellow I am I sign up at a Chan Zen center in upstate NY for a ten day session.  The meditation sessions master is a ruggedly handsome 50ish looking man who speaks very firmly with a heavy accent that I instantly recognize as Serbo-Croatian.  It is possible to speak with the master or the abbot only at specified brief times on alternate days.  When my opportunity arises to speak with the meditation session master I trot out the three or four Serbo-Croatian phrases I still remember, tell the man that I lived in Bosnia in 1964 and that I was an anthropologist and he takes an instant interest in me. This is Djordje. 

Over the course of the next few days Djordje sees that I am having an immensely difficult time sitting, which has become quite obvious to him because of my relentless fidgeting, sleeping, falling over, and snoring.  Have I done a silent retreat before Djordje wants to know.  And given my answer, why ten days to start rather than one or two.  I’d like to tell him it’s because I’m trying to get over a broken heart but it is beyond our linguistic capacities, so I just shrug.  “Listen,” Djordje advises, “you don’t have to sit for each whole session, but each session you must begin, try, and be present at the end.  If you are restless just walk slowly in nature and meditate. And you must maintain silence!”  Did I say I instantly loved Djordje?

The ashram is located in a spectacularly beautiful setting in Pine Bush, NY.  Very remote, mountainous, watery.  The snow is melting and there are deer herds everywhere.  My days are blissful.  The crows my companions.  One day, instead of just walking in nature meditatively as Djordje has recommended I even dare get in my car and drive off the grounds – something clearly not permitted – just to get away and get a better sense of where I am.  I pause for a while on a fairly deserted muddy dirt road in the woods some miles from the ashram within sight of a farmhouse, get out of the driver’s side of the car, get back in the passenger side, take out my laptop, do some writing without interference from the steering wheel, write maybe twenty minutes or so, realize I have to get back to the ashram and back into the meditation session before it ends, get back out of the car, back in the driver’s side, drive to the ashram, and have been sitting for a while in what I imagine is the remainder of the morning session when I notice Djordje has been called out of the session by the ashram director, something I have not seen happen before.

Before long Djordje is back in the meditation hall and I see he is signaling for me to come outside, which I’m only too happy to do, until I get there and see the abbot, the director, Djordje, and two of New York State’s finest highway patrol officers, who have been called by someone presumably in the farmhouse about a suspicious, unfamiliar car parked outside her house, the license plate number of which has been reported to the police who have deduced the vehicle belongs to someone at the ashram, have found the vehicle in the ashram parking lot, have the name and a description of a possible suspect of something, are there to investigate, and will not be thwarted or delayed.  I learn later in fact that they demanded to come into the meditation hall to drag me out and that the ashram authorities explained why that would be impossible, an incredible violation of the entire sacred meditation space, and a gross tarnishing of the ashram’s reputation, to which the police responded that they were going in anyway, only until Djordje prevailed upon them not to do so and that he would bring me out.

“And how do you know who we want, there are 60 people in that room,” the police ask Djordje and Djordje says he said, “Why do you think they keep me here?  I know things.”

Anyhow, the long and the short of this part of the story is that the police believe I am who I say I am, that I was doing more or less what I told them I was doing, for the innocent reasons I said I was doing it, that there were no outstanding warrants for my arrest, and they drive away.  Easy for me, but not for the abbot and the ashram director who are aghast, there have never been police on their premises ever, I am clearly not ashram appropriate material, and that Djordje is to instruct me that I must leave immediately, that my fees will be refunded, and that I am no longer welcome.  Which Djordje actually refuses to do.  Tells them it would be wrong to ask me to leave, that they may deny me admission any time in the future they so wish, but that he will not ask me to leave in the midst of a session.  “Fine,” the director says.  “But be assured we will never permit him to return.”

On the last day of the session everyone gathers in the morning to formally break our silence and share some words reflecting on our experience.  The abbot and the director are present.  When it is my turn to speak I say I have written a poem about my experience that I would like to read.  (It can be found here   ).  After hearing the poem the director tells Djordje that if I wish to return I will be welcomed.  Would that all my poetry served me that well. 

I say goodbye to the director with apologies for any unwanted attention I may have brought upon the ashram.  The director says to me, “Do you think there is any rule of ours you haven’t broken?” 

I say goodbye to Djordje and tell him I hope to return one day to visit “my” village of Lijesnica in Bosnia and Djordje says that if I do I come I should visit him in Croatia as well.  And here I am.  With far more now to tell.