Journey to Ixtlan

Journey to Ixtlan
By Carlos Castaneda

In the first two semesters of my time at Maryland I was looking to understand myself further. With my recent rediscovery of the wonders of words and literature, only three years preceding, I knew reading would be a significant factor in my introspective endeavors. At the same time, I was well in tune with my affinity for personal and direct experience and exploration. I found a meditation group where I was given a book list. Journey to Ixtlan was on that list. The story in Journey to Ixtlan was parallel to my own "spiritual" yet existential investigations.
Carlos Castaneda, an anthropologist, journeys to deep parts of a desert to visit Indian sorcerer Don Juan and discovers a lot from what he is not told. He goes with an objective taxonomic mindset: he just wanted answers to his questions about Indian demographics. In retrospect, he finds that his aim was a) existentially arbitrary and b) the Indian population was so mixed and multicultural that it would be quite difficult to get any straight answers. However, something kept him coming back though he was not making any headway on his assignment. The mystery of Don Juan’s ways in warriorhood brought him back season after season. In the end Carlos found a new outlook on life, not exactly in a new-age way, but that the fabric of his existence acquired a higher thread-count.
Oh yeah—I was very disappointed that no explicit accounts of peyote trips were recorded. But there was some trippy stuff in there.
I wondered why a book that explores Native American spirituality was on that book list. And I found my answer; Castaneda became fully aware of the robotic manners of his intellectual, academic, life pursuits. All the while, he thought he had some control and choice but in truth, he was totally limited to identifying with his “roles” and memories. To put it in a few words, I think Carlos’s Journey to Ixtlan points out how social and societal education entwines with self-identity to become a cognitive drug for the masses. It is possible to function without drugs or intoxication and still be part of a drug-culture: to be a warrior.

"Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge...because the art of a warrior is to balance the terror of being a man with the wonder of being a man."
~Journey To Ixtlan

What?

What? 108 Zen Poems
By Ko Un

Working at McKeldin library affords me the opportunities of a book whore—to hold short fantastic affairs between myself and dozens of books, per hour, without commitment; But I remember the good ones. Ko Un's What? - 108 Zen Poems was one such book. A calligraphic Zen painting of a sword on the creamy skin of the pocket-sized book caught my eye. "I must have this book," I told myself. I checked it out that evening.
I read it in one sitting and loved every single minute of it, the first book of poetry dedicated to one person I have ever read. It was of course translated and had several introductions from Ginsberg, Zen Master Thich Naht Hanh, and others. Their introductions of Ko Un gave me the perfect frame of mind—though I had learned about and practiced several faces of Buddhism in previous years—to read and fully enjoy Ko’s poetry. But words and praises about a person can only do so much; some other deeper bond drew me to What?
Existential-Zazen theory...
The nothingness of existence that prevails in Zen Buddhism radiates between the lines of almost every poem in this book. This, however, is not to say the collection is a cold bleak outlook on life, it is more like a set of realist/naturalist/meditative blips of clarity from a very well-experienced Korean (that’s my endorsement for Ko Un).

"A Rosary

Angulimala was a devil of a cutthroat.
The fellow
sliced off the fingers of the people that he killed
and wore them
strung dingle-dangle around his neck,
including his father's fingers.

That was a real hundred-eight bead rosary.
Every bead on the string
a life."

"A Rosary" was the meeting point for the two of us: a metaphor for, and an agreeable way a Zen warrior ought to live in his time and culture. I think this is the most potent poem in What?
He, a Korean "jail-bird" rogue Bodhisattva, and I, an Americanized Africa-Born Romantic and anti-intellectual, through but a few words that allowed for cosmic transcendence, came to a mutual understanding and view on life. Check it out, maybe you'll find your own questions and answer to the question: What? [is this?]