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I WAS RACING home early from work one sunny afternoon this week, eager for an extra hour or two to polish up this latest edition of Hundred Mountain. My head was full of a dozen last-minute design and content details, sorting through and dismissing possible angles on this "Editor's Notes" column, worrying whether I would make my self-imposed deadline for launching this new edition on the web. In other words, the usual, self-harassing, Indy 500 mind of the modern individual. A red light switches to green and I start moving with the traffic. I glance up at my rear view mirror. There, bearing down upon me like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse comes a guy in a black sedan, who hasn't noticed how slow traffic is moving. I see his eyes bulge, his face puff with alarm. Since we are on a bridge, I have only a few feet of leeway and jerk my car tight to the right. WHAM! He clobbers my left rear bumper. "Dammit!" I cry out, pulling over, thumping the dashboard. I'll never get this issue launched on time now! "Dammit, dammit!" And you thought your editor of Hundred Mountain was maybe this Zen-like font of composure. NO, JOHN LENNON had it right in a tune he once write: "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans." I stop my assault and battery of the dashboard, trying to catch my breath. I get out, he gets out. "I'm sorry," he says. "It only takes a glance away from the road." Fortunately, he knew the score --- rear-end collisions are always the fault of the driver in the rear. I had to wonder, though, as I inspected the damage -- not too bad, a peeled-off bumper guard, possible loosening of one side of the bumper -- whether a more alert and mindful state of mind on my part would have prevented the accident. I had to go with the flow, whatever the case. These things have scripts, traffic accidents. Exchange insurance info, wait for the cops, try and make small talk with a stranger you with whom you suddenly have a legal and binding relationship. What can you do? I wanted to say, "Ah, it's not too bad," to Ronald the pharmaceutical salesman who had hit me, and move on. Just so I could race home and get to Hundred Mountain. But he was driving a fleet car and his right front bumper was crumpled in, and mine might be badly damaged in some unseen way. We had to run the script. We made small talk. What did he sell? "Pharmaceuticals--prenatal drugs, birth control pills," he said. I rested my hands on the concrete berm of the bridge as we waited for a cop to show. It was a Spring-like March day, shapely clouds plying the bue skies, birds making lazy swoops in the air. But for the accident, I might not have noticed it so well. There was that. Looking down to the river below the bridge, I see a rivulet that runs into the wide, muddy waters. The rivulet had cut a small, narrow channel through the dark-brown riverbank mud. It widened out to take a huge bite out of the riverbank through erosion. The sight of it recalled a quote about the mind, how if we let a thin stream of agitation grow in us untreated, it can chew huge channels through our spirit. Breathe it out, I reminded myself. THE COP DID come eventually. Turns out I knew his brother, a former cop, from my days as a cub reporter in a town one over from where this one worked. We have a nice talk. "Can you get my 11-year-old daughter Britney Spears concert tickets? She is crazy about her," he says smilingly, upon learning I work as a newspaper feature editor and that we would review the teen hotshot's upcoming local appearance. "You're about the third or fourth person to ask me, " I say, smiling back. "Sorry, wish I could. I've got a five-year-old daughter so I guess I have this kind of thing to look forward to." We chat on. All in all, it's a pretty pleasant accident, as far as accidents go. Ronald's words stay with me still: "All it takes is a glance away from the road." If that's not a karmic statement, I don't know what is. But also, I am reminded of how we go seeking hither and yon in projects, quests and hard-driving efforts, looking for comfort, for awareness, for insight, for awakening to the present moment. When, in fact, it is only what we have with us, and around us, right now, in our minds and spirits, that is the only true field of action. "The only Zen you find on the top of mountains," said Robert Pirsig, "is the Zen you bring up there." Or, to quote another writer who got it right, Wallace Stevens: "It must be this rhapsody or none. The rhapsody of things as they are." Oh, by the way. I missed my deadline. But here is the new issue, anyway.
I AM NOT normally in the business of publishing a piece that identifies me as one of five "distinguished voices in the cybersangha." (See '"Traffic Accident, Losing Cool in Undistinguished Way" above) But that is how Tom Armstrong describes the panelists in a forum he compiled on the role of humor in Buddhist spiritual practice for this issue's Page One article. Tom, a wonderful free-spirit in the Buddhist community on the web, originally contacted me and four other folks who have had Buddhist-oriented work published for years on the web. Later on, he offered the piece to Hundred Mountain. It's a very good one and I am happy to publish it, even as undistinguished as I feel when bruising dashboards and being a prime stumblebum on the Buddhist path. FAITHFUL READERS may notice that I have, for the moment, taken two regular features off-line (although they are still accessible through the Site Index): the Resources section and the Reviews. They will return revised and reworked in future issue. Reviews is also down because Hundred Mountain as yet has no regular reviewer of books, movies, music and whatnot that have a Buddhist-orientation to them. If you have written reviews before, and might be interested in such an assignment, please contact me. Be well, Douglas Imbrogno PREVIOUSLY: Editor's Note, Issue 3: Editor's Note, Issue 2: Editor's Note, Issue 1:
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