Love Has No Pride

 These are not tin gers

 "Renunciation is realizing that nostalgia for samsara is full of shit."

--Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Montana is a somewhat unusual and extremely cold place somewhere in the western United States, populated by filthy rich movie stars, retired detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department, and four or five natives busily engaged in selling off pieces of the state to the highest bidder.

Literary notions of rugged iconoclasts notwithstanding, the usual occupation in Montana is minding everybody's business but your own. Nobody watches trials in Montana because everybody is busy testifying. They offer substance like, "I always knew something was wrong with that boy, but I never wanted to say anything."

When they are not engaged overcharging movie stars, selling guns to retired detectives,  testifying against each other, or mindlessly watching enviro-terrorists pillage the beautiful state's once proud natural resources, the people in Montana flee south, to Las Vegas: the city of their dreams.

In Las Vegas, they squander the money made off movie stars, guns, and ravishing the gulch, on that slippery succession of fantasies for which the pimps, whores, and gamblers of Nevada are justly celebrated throughout the world. Quickly impoverished, sadder but no wiser, they drag their trailers on to Kalipornia, to purvey pony rides to wealthy, ill-mannered children in places like Orange County.

In Kalipornia, they inevitably encounter people of many different ethnic backgrounds, which of course sends them running back to the safety of Montana.

Happy anniversary to a true Wisdom Dakini

If it sounds like I am unduly critical of Montana, be assured that such is not the case. Once, in the distant past, I had a 2,500 acre ranch there, a young bride, and many plans for the future. I know the strange beauty of the place very, very well. I also know to never again take a classical opera singer from Tianjin to a 2,500 acre ranch in Montana, in the dead of winter, and expect her to gratefully share one's childlike sense of wonder when the snowflakes softly fall.

Love, apart from having no pride, is strange but we shall speak no more of it.

Those round tin things in the photograph above, taken in the general vicinity of Bozeman, are not improved Mongolian gers.

That needs to be clearly understood.

American Buddhist monk abroad

I engage in this reverie because the very observant Don Croner is reporting (hit the link and scroll down) that once upon a time best buddy Konchog Norbu, once upon a time the Dreamer of Danzan Ravjaa, is relocated from Mongolia to Montana now. Believing, as in the fullness of time we all do, that writing improves the mind once the opera singers have sung, Konchog has reinvented himself as "Bitterroot Badger," blogging from Bozeman.

Witness the badger, instead of badgering the witness

The literary device is that of a burrowing animal observing a man who wants to be a monk, and of course the badger knew all along that something was wrong with that boy, but he never wanted to say anything.

We honestly wish both the man and the badger all the best.