Zen Rider

Different people ride different kinds of motorcycles in different ways and go different routes to different places and do different things when they get there.

Sometimes I need to go someplace and I use the Chrome Nun to get there. But usually I don't have a precise destination in mind when I take off. Usually I just start the bike and then do what I want to do next.

I might sit there awhile. I might turn left or I might turn right. I might go fast or I might go slow. I might ride in the grass.

I am in immediate mode. Anything can happen and I'm awake and aware and present in the moment.

When I have a destination I might be thinking about that, or listening to a CD to pass the time, or daydreaming, especially if I'm in the car

But when I'm in immediate mode my attention and my thoughts are in the here and now. I see the road and the sky and everything between them. I see and hear and smell everything around me.

Most people usually have their minds partly on what they are doing, partly on the past and partly on the future. Their attention is diluted. And since we can't really see future or past, those parts are largely imaginary. So most people are usually only about 25% aware most of the time. They are like sleepwalkers.

That's fine, I guess. But we're only alive for a short time. I want to pay attention to this short life and glean as much as I can from it. So I often stop projecting and remembering and imagining and I just pay attention to the ever-changing now.

I probably do this best in a quiet place or in the woods. And I do it pretty well sitting at the Starbucks at the Loop. But it is a blast to do this while riding a good motorcycle.

What I do is a kind of meditation that I started developing when I was 12, back in 1966. I was curious about different religions and I was reading a book about them that introduced me to Zen Buddhism. It clicked the way Thoreau had clicked. I read more and began experimenting with different kinds and methods of meditation. Around this time the Beatles studied under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who did not click with me. I saw another Emerson in the Maharishi, and that's not a good thing.

By the time I graduated from high school in 1972 I was an accomplished Zen Rider. Two years later a book appeared called "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." Of course I bought a copy. It wasn't about Zen or motorcycle maintenance. It was the story of a disturbed guy and his disturbed son, written in disturbing prose. It effectively conveyed his screwed-up thinking and I hated it. It was like reading a 19th century German philosopher while having a migraine; useless and painful. The book was a big hit.

Now I'm old and I ride. Thoughts and feelings rise and float by and past and away of their own accord, like the ever-changing scenery. And I perch on the brink of yet-to-come, watching the now unfold.

Ever new. Ever unique. Beautiful.