California Dreamin’

After a year in Virginia Beach, I was transferred to San Diego, CA. This came at the perfect time as I now had a direction for my spiritual quest and was heading to the center of the new age spiritual universe–California. I was assigned to the administrative staff of the Rear Admiral in charge of all surface forces in the Pacific Fleet (basically everything except submarines and aircraft). I was stationed at the Naval Amphibious Base at Coronado–home of Navy Seals basic training.

San Diego was paradise for someone who spent his first 18 years of life in rainy, gloomy Western Washington. Nearly perfect weather every day. It rained in San Diego about as often as it snowed in the lowlands of Western Washington. The other 360 days it was sunny and in the 70s during the “Winter” and in the 80’s during the Summer. Next door to a warm Pacific Ocean that you could actually swim in and only a few hours drive away from the San Bernadino Mountains and miles of desert that included Joshua Tree and the Coachella Valley.

I began reading every book I could find on Buddhism and Taoism (and there were a lot of them). I also began taking yoga classes along with practicing Transcendental Meditation (something I picked-up in Virginia Beach). In my readings, it seemed that the general consensus was that spiritual experiences via psychoactive substances were not the “real” thing–they could be a catalyst for beginning a spiritual journey, but they needed to be supplanted by more traditional practices if one wanted a permanent transformation. As Houston Smith–the great scholar of world religions–said, “Having a spiritual experience is easy, living a spiritual life as a result of that experience is what’s hard.”

During this time, the one writer primarily responsible for my initial understanding of Buddhism and Taoism was a popular interpreter of Eastern philosophy–Alan Watts. I liked Watts because, like me, he was a mostly self-taught religious scholar with a strong affinity for Eastern philosophy. Born in England, he served as an Episcopal priest for 5 years before moving to the United States in 1951 to accept a teaching position at the American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco. During his lifetime he also had a teaching fellowship at Harvard and was a frequent speaker at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Watts had a way of taking the most complex philosophical concepts and making them easily understandable, which was a big part of his popularity.

Alan Watts was close friends with a fellow British expatriate–Aldous Huxley. Like Huxley, Watts experimented with Mescaline, Psilocybin, and LSD in America. But unlike Huxley, Watts came to reject these substances as valid tools for a spiritual seeker. Ironic, because Watts died at age 58 due to heart failure exacerbated by his lifelong alcoholism.

Armed with a foundation of key concepts in Eastern philosophy thanks to Watts, I was able to gain a better understanding of source texts in Buddhism and Taoism. I found myself particularly drawn to Taoism. I think this was because I had not yet learned to separate the teachings of the Buddha from the religion that sprouted up around them. Later on, I would discover that the quickest way to destroy a spiritual teaching is to make it an organized religion.

Taoism led me to t’ai chi–the ancient Chinese slow-motion martial art based upon Taoist philosophy. Since learning Transcendental Meditation, I had experienced ongoing difficulties with seated meditation. For one, no matter what position I tried to sit in after about 5 minutes my lower back hijacked my attention leaving little left for meditation. Also, I seemed to have hit a wall with seated mediation and wasn’t getting much from it.

T’ai chi was often described as a “moving” form of meditation. I was ready to give it a try. All I needed to do was find a teacher. One Saturday I was strolling through Balboa Park, when I saw a group of about 10 people doing–you guessed it–t’ai chi. They were led my an elder Chinese man who simply went by “Mr. Leong.” All I needed to do to join the class was show-up on Saturdays and give Mr. Leong $5 when class was over. Sounded simple enough. I studied with Mr. Leong for about a year, learning Wu style empty hand and short staff t’ai chi forms.

The more I practiced t’ai chi, the more I wanted to learn–not only of t’ai chi, but of its sister arts. This has been a recurring theme in my life–if I decide to get into something, I jump in with both feet and don’t look back. I realized that continuing with Mr. Leong was no longer enough for me.

About this time, I met an interesting fellow from Oklahoma. He professed to not only teach t’ai chi, but many other Chinese martial arts. His name–Mike Brown. Mike had been into martial arts for quite some time before meeting a petroleum geologist from Taiwan, Her Yu Wong. Dr. Wong had studied Chinese martial arts since he was a boy in Taiwan. Since moving to the U.S. he continued his practice, but never took on any students thinking no one in this country would be interested. Mike was interested and soon became Dr. Wong’s first student.

Eventually, Mike Brown and Dr. Wong had started the Ching Yi Kung Fu Association to share Dr. Wong’s knowledge with others. In so doing, they set minimum standards for what anyone wanting to teach these arts needed to be considered proficient. So, if I wanted to teach t’ai chi as an instructor certified by the Ching Yi Kung Fu Association, I had to learn all the Ching Yi martial arts. This way, even if all I ever taught was t’ai chi, I would have a well-rounded background and understanding of the tradition from which t’ai chi emerged.

This was just what I was looking for. Now I could get a more comprehensive training in these disciplines from both the Taoist and Buddhist heritage. Through t’ai chi I had found a physical discipline that combined gentle exercise with meditative focus. Since I found the Taoist philosophical teachings so compelling, I wanted to see how the physical practices born of this philosophy could further my spiritual development.

After being discharged from the Navy, I stayed another two years in San Diego. During this time my life consisted of eating, working (just enough to pay expenses), sleeping, and practicing kung fu. I was learning everything I could from Mike and, eventually, helping him teach as an informal assistant instructor. At the time, I thought I would never return to Washington except to visit. San Diego was my new home. But shortly after passing my test to become a certified Ching Yi Kung Fu instructor, I decided it was time to head back North. My four plus years in the Golden State had come to an end. I loaded everything I owned into a VW Super Beetle and began driving North on I-5. The moment I crossed the border into Washington, it started snowing (this was in April). I should have seen that as an omen and turned around. I didn’t.