The priest Sekiso said, “You're on the top of a hundred-foot pole. Now, how do you advance?” This koan was given to me by life (thank you Jean-Marc) and I have been struggling with it for about two weeks. I read that the “official” answer is, “You take the next step.” According to Bernie Glassman in his book, Instructions to the Cook, it means you “live fully.” Okay, live fully or take the next step, what the hell does that mean if you’re at the top of a hundred foot pole! Even Glassman says these little “official” answers are just a beginning. “You have to go further. You have to demonstrate the answer. You have to embody the answer. You have to show the Zen master how you live fully in the moment. You have to manifest the answer in your life.” For days, I kept thinking about how I could step off the pole without falling. I thought, like a bird; I could figure a way to fly into the horizon. Or maybe I could just stay up there. But flying off is a daydream, and holding on is paralysis. Either option feels like the avoidance of life and to step off feels like death. So, how did I proceed? The priest Sekiso said, “You're on the top of a hundred-foot pole. Now, how do you advance?” Answer: You step off, fall, hit the ground, and die. I know this because I finally stepped off the pole on Monday, 9/11 – 2006 that is. I hadn’t really planned on taking time to think about what occurred five years ago on that day, but an image entered my mind that morning and I couldn’t get it out of my head. I kept thinking about the people who jumped from the towers. (The media quickly stopped airing that footage.) What I kept remembering was the length of time it took those who jumped to fall. How they moved through the air. Some curled up into a fetal position. Others did flips. One man jumped like a swimmer off a high dive, head first with hands pointing down like an arrow. I imagined both the exhilaration and terror of that moment. Those people had made a choice. They knew they were going to die up there and chose one last wild ride down instead of asphyxiation under a desk or annihilation in the towers’ crushing fall. They took the next step. On Monday, I jumped too. Obviously, my fall was not the same as theirs, but the images of their deaths in my head five years later lead me to the answer of my koan. The priest Sekiso said, “You're on the top of a hundred-foot pole. Now, how do you advance?” Answer: You step off, die, fall, and hit the ground. I suffered from broken bones and internal bleeding. Still, a hundred feet was not enough to kill me on impact. As I lay, I look up at the sky and dissolved into it. A leap of faith (Thank you Kierkegaard) into vast sky will always result in a fall to the ground of vast emptiness. Some people, I imagine, interpret this as an exhilarating flight. Others a terrifying drop. Either way, a jump into the air eventually leads to an impact of great measure. Transformation requires a death before rebirth; however, the death is not necessarily in the crash. It is in taking the next step.

I was cleaning out my cell phone photo files and found this little gem. It’s a pudding wresting contest from a white trash carnival I went to here in Phoenix last winter. The participants were raising money for charity. I love the mind and its ability to reach states of higher consciousness or in my case here higher states of unconsciousness.