October 2008 | Cerro Gordo Temple | Santa Fe, NM

When I was a child I was deeply affected by A Pilgrim’s Progress, a Christian story of the spiritual journey rich in images of the emotional landscape like the Slough of Despond. I’ve always wanted to tease out of the koans a similar landscape of pilgrimage, and here are two talks that were an early run at that. We begin in the Red Dust, an ancient Chinese name for the world of our ordinary lives, take off for a sojourn Deep in the Mountains, and return eventually to Sitting by the Charcoal Fire. For some of us, life in the Red Dust presents questions the Red Dust can’t answer, so we look for gates that open into wild and solitary mountain paths. Eventually, though, we return, transformed, to a Red Dust world transformed by our transformation. The raging conflagration of the Buddha’s Fire Sermon has become the steady, warming glow of the Charcoal Fire, a good place to unthaw our toes and listen to stories.