THE FIRST BIG HIPPIE WAVE pretty much missed Scott Joseph Duprez. Growing up in the 1960s tucked away in Riverside, California, he was more interested in surfing Pacific Ocean waves, rather than surfing the exotic waves of drugged up, expanded consciousness. But the second wave, oh, that one swept him away. It would wash him across Europe and Asia as he joined the great, multicolored stream of hippies who flowed across borders, in search of holy highs, cosmic trips and the buzz that went on forever.

It didn't, of course. Some hippies died along the drug trail, brains and bodies burnt to a crisp from too much of what they felt was a good thing, maybe the best thing. Some came home and went into the hills. Many became respectable---or perhaps only slightly disreputable---citizens, putting their high-flown idealism to practical purposes. Some did 180 degree wheelies and became right-wing politicians. A few kept on plowing the trail in search of cosmic insight, yet minus the drugs. Scott Duprez-- these days known as Bhante Yogavacara Rahula and a world-traveling Buddhist monk going on 25 years now---was one of them.

What a long strange trip it's been, someone once said of the journey through the '60s. The line applies just as well to the life story of Yogavacara Rahula, now age 50, who took a crooked, colorful path to spiritual awakening within the Therevada Buddhist tradition.That is to say:
• Love bead-wearing soldier who goes AWOL to Copenhagen until he's
court-martialed and busted in rank.
• Hippie wanderer funding his travels by selling LSD, who's thrown into jail in Afghanistan after they find his hash stash.
• Stoned-out pothead toking on the grounds of one of Buddhism's most sacred sites.
And perhaps strangest of all, a committed, serious doper who---once he'd had his first taste of Buddhist teachings----would in short order
chuck it all, shave his long beard and hair, and wrap himself and his life
in the orange robe of the monk's way.

Hundred Mountain Journal Editor Douglas Imbrogno interviewed Bhante Rahula ("Bhante," pronounced BON-tay, is a term of monkish respect akin to "Reverend") on the occasion of the monk's visit this May to the Charleston, West Virginia area to lead a meditation retreat. Bhante Rahula's home monastery is the Bhavana Society, a Therevadan forest monastery and retreat center in West Virginia. The center was founded in 1988 in the mountainous back woods of Hampshire County by the Sri Lankan-born Buddhist monk Bhante Henepola Gunaratana Mahathera, internationally known teacher and author of the Buddhist best-seller "Mindfulness in Plain English."

Bhante Rahula was the first monk to live on the center's grounds and was instrumental in getting it on its feet. Yet to say Bhavana is his "home" is a bit of a misnomer. After all, the ornate tale of his spiritual awakening is told in a book titled "One Night's Shelter: From Home to Homelessness." The Buddha told monks to go forth into homelessness and Rahula's own footloose journey continues to this day. After his Charleston appearance, he leaves on a trek for four months in the Himalayan Mountains and then goes to India to teach meditation for two months.

HMJ: Would you characterize yourself as a hippie before you joined the armed services and were sent over to Germany in 1968?
RAHULA: Not really. I had smoked a little pot, but I was more a surfer. The hippie thing had just started. I was in Riverside and kind of isolated from it. After the army, then I grew my hair out longer and all that.

HMJ: Why did you join the service with so many people your age beginning to protest the Vietnam War?
RAHULA: I really didn't seriously question it. My brother-in-law was in the Air Force. Everyone else was going in. Why shouldn't I? Joining gave me the option of having a little more say on what I would do.

HMJ: You were assigned to Germany for 18 months to fix radio communications for a tank battalion. You also threw yourself into LSD and hashish use. Your time in Germany was a little bumpy, and not just from riding in tanks.
RAHULA: I went AWOL while I was in Germany---for a month in Copenhagen---and got court-martialed. I had been a Specialist 4th Class and got busted down to Private. In Germany, I was known as kind of a California hippie. The officers hassled us because we tried to wear love beads on our uniform. That's one reason why I went AWOL---getting hassled by the lifers.

HMJ: While in Europe you first began to meet hippies who had been on the trail to exotic places. What did you think about it?
RAHULA: I met a lot of Americans who had come back from India. At that time, I thought, 'I'm going there.' The hippie trail had just started
opening up in Europe

HMJ: So you came back to Riverside in Winter, 1970, and soon shipped right back out to Vietnam in February, 1970, for a ten-month stint. You recount in your book that, all things considered, you had a pretty nice time of it there.
RAHULA: I was assigned to a medical battalion, running a computer and doing records. I had a very easy job in Long Binh. I had lots of free time. I didn't even have to wear a uniform a lot of the time. So I spent daytimes stoned. I hate to say I was in Vietnam because of all the vets who had to suffer there and those who died. To say I was in Vietnam, I don't brag about it. I was there for 10 months, my time of enlistment came up and so they sent me home. It was just at the time they started drawing back troops. I got an Honorable Discharge from the service. Even an Army Commendation Medal, which was funny considering my record.

HMJ: After coming home, you took out on the hippie trail in a big way for several years. Where did your travels take you?
RAHULA: I saved a lot of money in Vietnam and had a nice nest egg. In the Summer of '72 I left on that epic journey to Asia. I went to Scandinavia and worked my way down. I visited Amsterdam and was living in the park with all the hippies in the summer of '72. I stayed in the Canary Islands. I went across North Africa to Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan. It was a carefree life, just following the hippie trail, wherever the drugs were good and cheap.

HMJ: You were no big-time drug dealer, but you were buying enough LSD and hash to sell, so as to fund your continued travels and also for personal use. Then you got busted. What happened?
RAHULA: I was busted for trying to smuggle hashish in Afghanistan. I was in jail for two weeks and under house arrest for two weeks while they were processing the case. That kind of woke me up. I had been staying stoned and losing my common sense. I really could've blown it had I got busted in Turkey or Iran, based on that movie ["Midnight Express."] Still, the religion didn't dawn on me. Actually, it did when I got out of the Army. I went to junior college in January, 1971. I did three semesters, got my associate degree, took some Transcendental Meditation classes. I was interested, but it didn't really hold me. I wanted to be a hippie and take drugs. But I knew I'd come back to it at some point.