Patricia August Laquessa Ryfle, 1931-2009

My friend Steve Ryfle's mom died last weekend. Steve is the author of Japan's Favorite Mon-star (The Unauthorized Biography of Godzilla), one of the best books out there about Godzilla. I wanted to write about her because she was such an amazing woman. But I didn't really know her well enough. Stuart Galbraith IV, author of another amazing book on Japanese monster movies, Monsters Are Attacking Tokyo!: The Incredible World of Japanese Fantasy Films, wrote a much better piece than I ever could (Stuart's latest book is Japanese Cinema). He gave me permission to use it on this page. So here it is:

Steve Ryfle's mother, Pat, died over the weekend. It didn't come as a surprise; she had been in poor health for a long time, and spent the last few weeks at a hospice, gradually fading away.

If writing about somebody else's mother seems unusual - those who were lucky enough to have known Pat will understand. She was like everyone's favorite eccentric aunt, at times a mom-away-from-Mom.

To the envy of many, Pat loved and supported Steve like few moms did, which made his tender caring of her as Pat's health declined all the more touching. She often accompanied Steve to Godzilla movie marathons at the American Cinematheque and in Little Tokyo. She went with him to see Blaxploitation movies, to mainstream movies, to comic book conventions, and helped out with book signings when Steve's Japan's Favorite Mon-Star was published. The funny thing was, she had fun. She actually really, really liked the damndest movies, dating back to when Steve, then just a boy, took his mom to see Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster. When Steve took Pat to the world premiere of one of the recent Godzilla movies in Hollywood, my wife and I were shocked to discover Pat on one of the network news shows here in Japan, being interviewed about the film. Appropriately, her comments were dubbed into Japanese, but Yukiyo remembers her saying "Godzilla's roar is kinda sexy."

Pat was genuinely and justly proud of her writer-son. In her old apartment, Steve's writing was prominently on display. On one wall she kept a Mother's Day tribute column he wrote for her years ago when Steve was writing for a local newspaper. On another she had a framed picture of Steve - it might have been the portrait of him used by the same paper - under which Pat had written, proudly, "My Son, the Author."

Pat was such a constant yet welcome presence that, eventually, Steve's friends often invited Pat as well as Steve and his wife, Joal, to parties and other occasions. (She was there at a 2001 wedding party Yukiyo and I held at Sam Woo's, ahead of our actual wedding in Japan.) Pat was genuinely fun to have around - she was sweetly eccentric, rather like Stan Laurel's childlike screen persona. At one party at Steve and Joal's first house, somebody was making a toast, and Pat noticed the middle-aged man next to her wasn't drinking.

"What's the matter? Are you an alcoholic or something?" she asked, quite innocently.

"Er, uh....well, yes - as a matter of fact, I am," he replied.

"Aw, gee - that's too bad," Pat said, with genuine sadness. "Can't you have just one?"

Another time Pat sent Steve and I to the market down the street to fetch her some "free doughnuts" she had seen. As we walked down the block, we wondered what exactly had she meant by "free doughnuts?" We found the doughnuts, which were selling for whatever the going rate for doughnuts was back then.

When we returned, Steve asked Pat, "What did you mean, "free doughnuts?' They weren't free."

"Oh," she said, "I meant free-standing."

All Steve and I could do was look at one another, nonplussed. But to Pat, it made perfect sense.

Boy, how I miss her.

July 4th Fireworks

Last night I went with my friend Nina to a 4th of July party at her friend's house. This house happens to be located in an area of Los Angeles that is populated by lots of folks who very much enjoy their illegally obtained fireworks, let me tell you!

As dusk fell, we were assaulted from all sides by a variety of explosions, some of which were strong enough to rock the house. A palm tree about a block away caught fire, its top blazing like some kind of gigantic tropical candle until the LA Fire Dept. arrived to put it out. Even the presence of the fire department and cops didn't deter the neighbors from blasting away with stuff that must have been as powerful as sticks of dynamite.

Nina's friends have four cats, all of whom were in various states of distress throughout the melee. Most of them hid under the bed. But one responded in a weird way by becoming aggressive with those of us who weren't residents in his home.

Later that night I experienced a series of unpleasant dreams. Nina told me later she too had been unable to sleep much of the night. I'm certain the fireworks had a lot to do with this.

Watching the way the cats reacted to the noise and light, and watching my own reactions to it, I started thinking about the way we humans deliberately put ourselves into situations that cause our senses to react in violent ways. Fireworks shows, rock concerts, action movies, sporting events, video games, talk radio and a whole host of common forms of entertainment are geared at over-stimulating our senses. Even driving through a big city like Los Angeles is an exercise in sensory over-stimulation.

I don't think a bit of this kind of thing now and again does much irreparable damage. I believe the human body was designed to be able to handle a certain degree of sensory over-stimulation.

But we have developed a tremendous amount of technology designed to create and sustain a level of excitement we were certainly not designed to handle. We need to be careful with this stuff. It can be incredibly damaging to the nervous system.

So cool it with the boom-booms!

INDEPENDENCE DAY

My friend Nina wants to do Zazen tomorrow morning (July 4, 2009). So I will be at Hill Street Center at 10 AM if anyone else wants to join. Actually, I don't run the thing anymore. So I should consult with the folks who do before unilaterally deciding. But I have now spoken. So that's that! If it's just me & Nina, that's fine. But if anyone else feels like a bit of Zazen before their 4th of July picnic or whatever, please feel free to stop in.

I was a bit surprised at the response in the comments section to that article I linked to last time in which the Christian minister trashed Zen. I would never even have considered writing to the guy or even worrying very much what he had to say. I just thought the piece was amusing.

There's no proselytizing in Zen because there's no sense in trying to get anyone to convert to it. There's also no sense in trying to change the minds of the ignorant. You can put the correct information out there and hope for the best. But there's no sense in getting up in anyone's face. It just makes them harden their own position against yours. Ignorant here is the significant word because folks like that minister deliberately ignore what doesn't fit their worldview.

There's a mountain of wrong information out there about Zen, a lot of it from supposedly "respected authorities." You can't really change that. Just enjoy.

FATES WORSE THAN DEATH

There's an interview with me up now on Buddhist Geeks. So go read it. Or listen to it. Or both. Or neither. Or both and neither. Or neither both nor neither.

Also somebody sent me this funny article that reveals the truth about Zen.

I've been thinking more about death. A friend of mine told me his mom is dying of cancer right now. I like his mom. She's very cool.

But after watching what my own mom went through I know there are many fates worse than death. And I don't really think dying is all that bad of a thing just in and of itself. Of course it's best to postpone it as long as feasible. I plan to live as long as I can.

I can't say I have no fear of death. But I no longer have a fear of annihilation. Annihilation goes on all the time. If you're gonna fear annihilation at the moment your body ceases functioning, you might as well fear it right now because the you that started reading this article is utterly gone.

That thing that you call "me" has no limits. Birth and death can't touch it. And yet there will come a day when you'll be gone, daddy, gone. And nothing will bring you back again. What you really are is more real, and more you, than anything you can conceive of.

When death comes naturally, it should be allowed to happen. Sure. Fight it off when you have a fighting chance. But when it's time to go, go in peace knowing there is nowhere to go but here.

DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY (NOT!)

That interview about dating I just did (see post below) is on line now. click here to see it!

As most of you have heard by now, the music world lost one its great legends, a performer who changed the direction of pop music forever and influenced a generation in terms of style and sound. I'm speaking, of course, about Sky Sunlight Saxon, legendary front man and bassist for The Seeds.

Although best known for their biggest song, Pushin' Too Hard, The Seeds were more than one-hit wonders. Sky Saxon continued to pilot various line-ups of The Seeds right up until his death on Thursday. Though they never became as famous as the people they influenced, The Seeds' sound is clearly apparent in a host of more popular performers including Iggy Pop, The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, The White Stripes, Nirvana and many others.

I was the proud owner of some of Sky's later albums on which he expanded The Seeds original pounding garage punk into brutally beautiful slabs of twisted madness, often lasting an entire LP side and consisting of just two chords that pummeled the listener into psychedelic psubmission.

In other news Farrah Fawcett Majors passed away yesterday. When I was in junior high I had her poster. You could see nipples! And I think one of the Jackson Five died too. They used to have a cartoon show. Or maybe it was one of The Osmond Brothers. I always got them confused.

Ironically, the morning of the day all this news broke I attended the cremation ceremony for a close friend of one of the people who comes to the Saturday morning Zazen classes at Hill Street Center (info to your left, I'll see you there tomorrow!). Buddhist cremation ceremonies generally consist of some chanting, followed by covering the body with flowers, followed by some more chanting and the offering of incense. It's a nice ceremony. Short and sweet.

The person in question happened to be a priest in another Zen organization in town. I was not there, but I was told that one of the other priests in his organization took the opportunity of his passing away to deliver a lecture about how a newly departed person searches for his or her next mother for 49 days before reincarnating. I could be mistaken about the contents of this particular lecture. But this is not at all an uncommon topic of talks following the death of a monk or Buddhist practitioner.

I get kind of annoyed when people use death as an opportunity to air all their superstitions, especially when those people airing the superstitions do so cloaked in the guise of religious authority. I know that it's done partly as a way to ease the pain of those in mourning. But I don't see why we need grand speculations on topics that nobody could possibly know anything about in order to comfort those in mourning.

The Universe is vast and mysterious. We know that neither matter nor energy is ever created or destroyed. The Heart Sutra says it this way, "No one is born or dies." Those who pass away remain with us as long as we remember them. And more than that, their life never really departs from this very place because there is nowhere else to go. Beyond this, everything else is pure speculation.

I'm not convinced that it's ultimately useful to escape into the world of fantasy after someone we know or love dies. I can understand the desire to turn away from the pain of reality. It often seems too much to cope with. I know my mom's death in 2007 sure did -- and still does sometimes. But we can never truly escape from that which is real. We can cover our eyes. But even then we're confronted with the reality of our own covered eyes.

Too often, though, the occasion of death is taken as an excuse to indulge in fantasy. We don't simply take a break from the pain of loss to remain quiet and absorb its lessons. We fly away into the false beauty of our imaginations. Not that imagination is a bad thing. But it isn't good to get lost in it.

We think that reality might be more than we can handle. But I'm not certain that's ever true. Much of the pain of grief is often fueled by imagination too. We imagine life without our loved one and speculate about how we won't be able to cope. But such speculation is as fanciful as imagining our loved one with wings and a halo walking streets paved with gold way up high in the clouds. I don't think we cure our pain by any kind of speculation.

We cure our pain by feeling it as it is, not adding to it and not trying to make it stop. The pain of loss is just what it is. We feel it and then we move on.

HOLLYWOOD, DATING, AMMA

I got an e-mail yesterday from a blogger who wanted my Zen dating advice. The blog is gonna come out next week and I'll link to it so you can see what I said. (Now it's up click here to read it.)

It's weird she should ask me this now because I've been thinking quite a lot about the subject lately. I am a Zen teacher and I am now well and truly free of any romantic entanglements. No girlfriend, no wife, none of that stuff. I told the interviewer "I am dating." And this, for her intents and purposes and ways of defining things was true. People who are not attached or celibate are "dating." At least I think that's how it works these days.

I suppose I'd say I am "open to dating." Of course, basically no woman in Southern California will touch me with a barge pole because I am too old and not a "player."*

I had this weird experience at a party last week in which I was talking to a woman. Once she figured out that I could not help her career or whatever she wanted from the men she chose to speak to she started looking around the room for someone better to talk to. It was extraordinarily rude behavior. But this is common practice in Los Angeles. I don't even take offense anymore. I am clearly not a "player." There are certainly a whooooole lot of ways I can help a person. But I cannot help them be successful in "the business" in this town.

I know those of you who don't live here are probably thinking there could have been lots of other reasons for such behavior and that I'm being defensive or what have you. Maybe my breath smelled. Maybe I was boring. Maybe I'm ugly. All kinds of stuff. But I've seen this enough that I can be sure I'm calling it correctly. Whatev's.

When someone doesn't want to hear what I have to say, I'm not going to waste my time saying it. This goes for any situation, whether dating or the potential thereof is part of it or not. There's really no point.

For those who asked about Amma, I did talk a bit about her at Noah's place on Sunday. I thought the one guy who made a comment about it in the post below this one accessed what I said pretty accurately. I don't hate Amma. But there's nothing in it I'm really interested in except as an example of what's wrong with so-called "spirituality" these days.

It's also a good example of Hollywood spirituality, while we're on the subject of Hollywood. Very glamorous and flashy, but with almost nothing at its core. Like a typical Hollywood film or anything they make in this city.

But before I get too deep into trashing Los Angeles, there is certainly a lot to like here as well. The natural setting, the weather, a certain vibrant, optimistic tone to the people -- even though much of that is woefully misdirected.

So there's my little tirade for today.

Cheers, m'dears!


*That's sexist and untrue. I know that lots of women around here are not that shallow. But a lot of people here, male and female, are amazingly blind to anything except that which will help further their ambitions in show biz.

AGAINST THE STREAM Tomorrow June 21, 2009 at 11 AM

Tomorrow at 11 am I will be speaking at Against The Stream (aka Dharam Punx, aka Noah Levine's place). Here is the into about the place from their website:

Against The Stream Buddhist Meditation Society is located in a historic building in East Hollywood, one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the city. It is on the corner of Melrose and Berendo, near LA City College and Vermont Avenue where you can find many small restaurants, bakeries and shops.

4300 Melrose Avenue
Los Angeles CA 90029

I'll probably say mean stuff about Amma...

See you there!