"We'll do some work in the garden and then we'll go to the beach for Spaziergang," Uncle Ed said as we were finishing up our lunch of avocado and cheddar cheese on whole wheat bread.
Spaziergang? I had never heard the word. Something exotic to eat? A Pacific fish? My husband offered no help. The puzzled look on my face lead to an explanation: a daily constitutional. Ever since, my husband and I have referred to the walks we take as spaziergang.
Uncle Ed, my husband's uncle, was born in Germany, where rambling walks are the national pastime, in the 1920s. He emigrated to America while still a teenager, escaping the Third Reich's grip over his homeland. He joined the US Army and liberated his home town, working in intelligence. After the war he went to college and then law school, eventually settling in San Francisco. My husband admired Uncle Ed, who was hipper than his father. Ed had hung out with the Beats in the Fifties, owned an extensive classical and jazz record collection, and had meditated with Alan Watts. By the time I met, Ed, a bachelor, he was in his early 60s. He had retired to a modest house with a significant garden in a small town in Marin County.
Uncle Ed took spaziergang on Dillon Beach, about a 20-minute drive from his home. The beach was a mile long, resulting in a two-mile walk out and back. He brought an empty garbage bag with him and nearly always filled it with the usual beach detritus. I remember once being out on the beach with Ed when he ran into his spiritual teacher at the time, Eknath Easwaren. He also took his daily constitutional on Dillon Beach. Easwaren taught and practiced "passage meditation," where the individual memorizes a passage from a spiritual text, repeating over and over to focus the mind, improve character, and increase consciousness. Ed, like many of Easwaren's students, began this practice by learning "The Prayer of St. Francis." Ed had installed a stained-glass window with an image of St. Francis on the front door of his home.
Ed died at 85 of kidney failure. My husband was the executor of his estate, and it fell to us to go through his effects before they were all donated to Goodwill. We thought for sure that we would find something--an unfinished novel, war diaries, a stack of letters from a lover--that would unlock the secret that Ed seemed to carry with him. We sorted through the many books in his libarary in English and German. We glanced through the card catalogue he had created for his collection of records, tapes, and cd's. We uncovered receipts from garden purchases and chamber music subscriptions. We found he had collected several volumes of his own favorite aphorisms, culled from the world's great writers and thinkers. We found notes Ed had written to himself, reminding him to walk to the store to get lunch, for instance, signs that his dementia was more advanced than we knew.
My sister-in-law had great experience sorting through the lives of older people. She had advised me to ". . . look in the pockets. That's where people put their treasures." We weren't looking for treasure, as Ed eschewed all but the simplest of necessities. We were looking for answers. In the last hours at his house, my eyes landed on a a dirty, old, insulated jacket hanging on a hook in the mudroom: the Dillon Beach jacket. Digging my fingers into the deep pockets I discovered a folded, well-worn, two page, typewritten document. I recognized the font of Ed's typewriter.
The text was a Zen poem, "The Xinxin Ming." I believe that Ed edited this particular version of the poem himself, as three translators are credited: R. H. Blyth, D. T. Suzuki, and Arthur Waley. My limited understanding is that the text was written during the Tang dynasty and that it bridges Buddhism and Taoism. Here are the first, the second-to-last, and the last stanzas:
There is nothing difficult about the Great Way
if you avoid choosing!
Only when you neither love nor hate,
does it appear in all clarity.
A hair's breath of deviation from it,
and a deep gulf is set between heaven and earth.
If you want to see it clearly,
do not be anti or pro anything.
The conflict of longing and loathing,
this is the disease of the mind.
Not knowing the profound meaning of things,
we disturb our (original) peace of mind to no purpose.
In the realm of Oneness, there is neither "other" nor "self."
To access this reality, intone "tat tvam asi" (Thou art that. Not two.)
In this reality, there are no separate things,
yet all thing are included.
The enlightened through the ages have entered into this Reality;
it is beyond time and space.
One instant is ten thousand years;
whether we see it or fail to see it,
it is manifest always and everywhere.
The small is as the very large when boundaries are forgotten;
the very large is as the very small when its outlines are not seen.
What is, is not; what is not, is.
If you have not realized this, do not tarry.
One in all, all in one, if only this is realized,
no more need to worry about your not being perfect!
The believing mind is not divided,
and the undivided is the believing mind.
This is where words fail,
for it is not of the past, future, or present.
Ed continued to walk on Dillon Beach until the last few months of his life. Eventually, picking up a sandwich at the general store and the mail at the post office an eighth of a mile from home served as spaziergang enough. Formal and private to the end, only the visiting nurse he had arranged for knew how sick he would become. As we scattered his ashes on the hillside behind his house, in the dry grass of August in Marin County, the meaning of spaziergang began to be revealed.
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