I come to you today writing inside a train bound for Paris. We were supposed to take a plane. But the Icelandic ash cloud messed that up. Right now we’ve reached the suburbs and I’m being distracted by all the crazy graffiti and ancient stone churches with their flying buttresses.The first four days of my European tour of 2010 were spent in London at the home of Andrew Deakin. Andrew is a student of Mike Leutchford, a fellow dharma heir of Nishijima Roshi. I didn’t do much Zen stuff in the UK except for having long wide-ranging philosophical discussions with Andrew. He kindly gave me his extra copy of Leonard Cohen Live In London DVD, though. Which, he says, has a very Zen feel to it. I’m looking forward to watching it.
After London I flew to Limoges in France. The flight was booked by my host in France, Arnaud Peuch. It was on Ryan Air, Europe’s cheapest airline, and left London’s Stansted airport at 6:45 AM. This meant waking up at 3:30 AM to catch a 4:10 AM Stansted Express train, which left from Liverpool Street Station, luckily a mere 25 minute walk from Andrew’s flat.
In spite of the massive ash cloud from the recent volcano in Iceland making its merry way around Europe, the plane for Limoges left on time. Limoges itself is a pretty nifty town. Not the kind of place I’d ever have thought of going on my own. But apparently it’s a popular destination for touring rock bands. The night I arrived, Atari Teenage Riot was playing a reunion concert there at the Centre Cultural de John Lennon. I wonder if Yoko Ono approved that name.
I did my first European talk at the Bibliothèque Francophone Multimédias, the town library. I wasn’t expecting massive crowds seeing as how none of my stuff is available in French except for on a now long-defunct website. And massive crowds I did not get. But I was pretty impressed that a healthy group of healthy people showed up to see some American Zen teacher they’d probably never heard of before they saw the fliers Arnaud put up around town.
This was the first time I had ever spoken through a translator. Last year when I did talks in Finland and Germany, I did them in English to English speaking audiences. In Finland pretty much everyone speaks English, while in Germany the retreats I led were advertised as being conducted in English so nobody would be surprised.
Nathalie, the translator, did a good job of making sense of what I was saying. But it couldn’t have been easy for her. In my work as a translator in Japan I found that what really made it possible was the fact that I always came to the job with a fairly deep knowledge of the Japanese monster movies the people I usually ended up translating for made. Nathalie wasn’t a Zennie at all and had a bit of difficulty finding French equivalents for words like “Heart Sutra” and suchlike.The Q&A was interesting in that it seemed to be focused on my spiritual accomplishments. One guy wanted to know if I remained conscious even while dreaming. There were one or two others along those lines. I recorded the talk so maybe I’ll get it up on the podcast we’re working on one of these days.
The following day Arnaud and I sat Zazen with a group led by a female Zen monk who had been ordained by Jaques Brasse. It was one of those rare Zen groups with more women than men, which is always good to see.
After that Arnaud drove me to Toulouse, about three hours to the South. I did a talk there at a sort of collectivist co-op type art space and restaurant. The audience there was far younger. There was a bit of tension with one woman who had a beer in her hand and seemed to be quite upset by what I was saying. I think she wanted some more bells and whistles. It was hard to tell. My friend and fellow Nishijima Roshi dharma heir Michel Proulx, a regular contributor to the comments section, did the tranductions (translation). Got that one recorded as well. It should make for an interesting podcast.It’s now the day after I began this post and I’m in Paris. Next stop Poland. All info is at http://web.me.com/doubtboy/Site/BookTour_2010.html
See ya!
PICTURES-
Top: Limoges
Middle: Toulouse
Bottom: Paris
