For some years I used to follow a blog of a very sincere Buddhist of the atheistic bent who lived on his own in a city in Arizona. His blog was part of a web page designed with Nvu, the open source web page editor. The web page itself had no design pretensions and consisted of links to other material including some photo galleries. There were several educational Buddhist items in the web page. A lot of the material concerned his life including his time with a poor family in Central America . He helped this family with money, skills and labour and was godfather to the children of the separated couple. One senses that the poor peasant family did not understand him. It would seem from his narrative that this experiment did not work out and eventually he returned to the USA. He was still bonded with the children and their drifting away as they grew older was a source of sadness. He had spend some time in India studying Buddhism. He was a highly trained computer programmer and had worked on genetics programming and was interested in the fusion of technology and the sustainable future of man. He had spent much time, in the warmer months, living very simply in the woods.
His regimen in the small flat was worthy of a monk who had taken the precepts. There were set periods for meditation, exercise and pious reading. He was very diligent about his vegan diet. He was maybe a little obsessive about his health. He took pride in his notice board which recorded the meditation sessions each day and the exercise taken in winter which consisted of walking up and down the stairs. He kept a blog in the web page with entries concerning his daily life, opinions, observations and problems. Sometimes it might be only a few lines and other times several paragraphs. He had turned 70 and, as typical at this age, felt his powers failing and was overly introspective. You might say he was a bit eccentric but, of course, any lay person who lives apart and puts an effort into the quest for enlightenment will appear eccentric, or worse. This man seemed incredibly alone yet he had made a dignified and worthwhile life by the honour of his purpose. It was the specialness of his life which drew me to him and kept me reading his blog. All of a sudden he wrote that he was going on a retreat, then the web page disappeared. When the web page went I felt I had lost a friend. This is one of the oddities of our technological life that in reality we are dealing with blips which can disappear at a click. I think now that perhaps his disappearance was a natural conclusion of his journey. I think of the lines of Chia Tao (777-841) (Trans. Lin Yutang)
I asked the boy beneath the pines.
He said, 'The master's gone alone
Herb-picking somewhere on the mount,
Cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown.'
