Skin and Bones

Shrines - Mt. Rubidoux

Mount Rubidoux

Mount Rubidoux is a small but prominent mountain on the south side of the Santa Ana River around which historic village of Riverside was settled in the late nineteenth century. The mountain was owned by Frank Miller, one of the city's early promoters and builder of the Mission Inn. Miller originally planned to develop the mountain for expensive homes; but this plan failed. Miller transformed the mountain into an inspirational park. He graded a road, circling around the steep hills to the top, where, in 1907, he installed a cross. On April 4, 1909, the American reformer, Jacob Riis, a friend of Miller and a guest at his Inn, proposed that Easter sunrise services be held on the mountain top.  The first ceremony was held a week later, on April 12, and a service has been held each year since.

Over the years, the top of the mountain was developed as an amphitheater with the cross and seating steps at one end and an American flag with more steps for seating at the other. The winding road became a pilgrimage road; and, indeed, offers inspiring glimpses of the cross as the hiker approaches the top.  In the 1920s, Miller added more structures along the road and at the top. Not all of these remain; but the surviving Peace Tower is a moving testament of Miller's nineteenth century faith in internationalism and the abolition of war, similar to Andrew Carnegie's views.

The mountain is now a Riverside City park. The road is no longer open to regular vehicle traffic. The narrow, paved road is a popular jogging path. There are two main routes up the mountain. The route with the least incline is exactly two miles from the park entrance to the top, hence, four miles altogether. Quarter-mile stones mark progress. There is also steeper road that is considerably shorter.  Foot trails drop down the hillsides on several sides, providing good training for athletes. One trail goes through a tunnel under the road. Small wildlife are frequently seen - skunks, rabbits, hawks, coyotes. Dogs are welcome on leashes.

We start our photo tour with view from the road as we walk toward the mountain top, since the historical purpose of the development was to provide a pilgrimage path for an important Christian holiday. Historical plaques are grouped at the bottom of this photoessay.

(The photos here are thumbnails. As usual, click on them for larger images with more detail.)

The Peace Tower

Near the Top, 1

Near the Top, 2

At the Ampitheatre

The Northeastern Side of the Amphitheater

(American flag on the promontory, Peace Tower visible to the right)

Landscape Views from the Mountain

Our next group of photographs are simply snapshots of views of the surrounding river valley and the City of Riverside. Except where noted, all photographs were taken in late morning. Clouds from several days of rain were lifting and breaking. By the time our hike was over, the sun was shining in a partly cloudy sky. The rains of late December 2004 and this week in February 2005 have made the hills as green as Ireland - a refreshing treat.

The Santa Ana River (flowing southwest within flood levees)

Looking North Across the Santa River

(Toward Rubidoux and the Flabob Airport with the white buildings in the center of the photograph)

Looking East to Riverside City

(Downtown and Civic Center, early evening photograph)

(Late morning photograph)

Cactus Gardens

One of the pleasures of a Mt. Rubidoux hike are the large fields of cactus ascending the slopes of the mountain and flowing downward into the backyard gardens of homes at the base of the mountain. We were captivated by the cactus, their insinuation into the rocky landscape, and the graffiti hikers have carved into their sturdy branches and leaves over the years. The following photos are in no particular order and are not individually titled.

Plaques

Plaques are placed around the mountain to memorialize historical and prominent personalities associated with Riverside and the mountain. Here are most of the plaques (in no particular order).

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Historical information from Tom Patterson, A Colony for California: Riverside's First Hundred Years (Riverside: Press-Enterprise Company, 1971), pp. 250-260.

Shrines - San Juan Capistrano

Will Interrupted

The traditional Christian village commmunity is unified by the sound of bells. One unifying experience of living within this community is walking within the call of the bells toward the center of community. I had this experience when growing up in a small New England village. The experience is difficult to recreate in suburban Southern California. For families who attend church, the experience is usually truncated. They drive in a car to a parking lot near the church; then, they walk a few feet to the sanctuary. San Juan Capistrano provides an opportunity to experience this historical community. The historical district of the town is compact. The Mission San Juan Capistrano is nearby. Tracing through and along the historical village is a bicycle and hiking trail, maintained as a city park. The photographs in this article provide views of this unique historical environment.

The Trail

We walked the center section of the Robert McCollum Bicycle Trail from Oso Road along Camino Capistrano (a parkway that goes directly to the center of the village), through a low-income housing project, along an equestrian center, then skirting Los Rios, a museum village of historical dwellings, and along a flood control channel. The entire trail is about four miles. If you leave the trail to walk along the Camino Capistrano, the parkway takes you past the Mission Basilica San Juan Capistrano, a modern church building at the northwest corner of the Mission San Juan Capistrano, along the western wall of the Mission, to the village center and Mission entrance. We visited the village on Saturday when the church bells were silent; but I am confident that if  you visited on a Sunday about the time of Mass, you could walk into the village to the sounds of bells calling you to worship.

All photographs are thumbnails. Clicking the thumbnails will produce a full-size image within a pop-up window. (Also see the note about quality of displayed images, at bottom of article.)

Here are several photographs of the Trail that runs in the El Camino Real Park.

My  Vision of Ruins

One of the phenomenological themes that has guided my vision of archaeological ruins and historical monuments is the intrusion of the willful intent of ancestral generations into our civic and personal lives today. These historical remains erupt into our lives (to use the language of Sartre); they are revelation. The human-made cityscape in which we live is, not simply by definition, the product of intentionality; so that we may say, our intent to act today (for instance, by driving along city streets to a store) is guided by the accumulated physical manifestations of the intentions of historical planners. Normally, the way we experience our own lives is that we are aware of our own intent, but not the historical intent which guides - or structures - our own intent. We tend to be aware of the intent of the past only when we see that intent broken, so to speak, so that we cannot use it. By being museums and no longer functioning as they were originally intended, ruins and monuments reveal the will, intent, plans, and goals of our cultural forebears. History is a philosophy lesson, as Europeans have learned the hard way. Philosophy is a history lesson, too; this lesson is equally difficult to learn. These two lessons are true, whether or not we like them; watch the news from Jerusalem and see for yourself.

In the United States, especially in California, such ruins are rare. Their rarity gives us today the illusion that we live self-sufficiently within our own personal plans and schemes. Careful analysis and self-examination would quickly expose this illusion; but few of us take the time for introspection. The ruins and monuments of San Juan Capistrano might provide revelation of the same insight, if we allow them to do so. I hope the photographs below will illustrate this theme. (The photos are not presented in a particular order. Most of the historical information is from the Mission guide.)

Mission San Juan Capistrano

The Mission was founded by Father Junipero Serra in 1776 for the Spanish Crown, one of a string of mission settlements along the coast. Spain wanted to stake a claim to possession of upper California.

Padres' dormitory and living quarters, constructed, presumably, before 1800.

Chalice Vine, Solandra guttata, West Indies.

Door, windows, chair, patched brick, pavers.

Looking along the columns of the cloister of the southern extension to the East Wing toward the padres' dormitory and living quarters.

Great Stone Church.

Construction was begun in 1797, and completed and dedicated in 1806. An earthquake in 1812 destroyed the church, killing worshippers. I would describe the architecture as Romanesque, albeit with a few more modern decorative elements, for its use of the classical barrel arch, irregular stone construction, and rough simplicity. I have not measured the ground plan dimensions, but I will venture that they are whole-number ratios, though they might include right-triangle ratios (which includes the irrational hypotenuse) obtained from a wood protractor (rather than by numerical calculation). This style (Europe 900AD-1200AD) would have the easiest for the padres to design and the Indians and Indian stone masons to build  under their supervision.

Sacred Garden and Bell Wall.

The Garden is adjacent to the west side of the Great Stone Church. The large bells are replicas of the original bells n the Church, recast from their bronze. The small bells were cast in 1804.

Looking into the Garden.

Central Courtyard

Entrance to the Courtyard, near the vestibule to the Serra Chapel.

Serra Chapel. Completed in 1788, restored in the 1920s.

Looking west along the northern side of the dormitory wing in the Central Courtyard.

Door to a Padre's Dormitory Suite.

Detail of patching texture around the upper window next to the door.

Brickwork and cement patching below the window.

I think the door and details of texture of the entryway provide an appropriate conclusion to our history-philosophy lesson.

(A note about the quality of the images. On some monitors, shadows in the images are displayed as black without detail. Such display is not faithful to the original images and is not intended. On most monitors, the shadows in the photos are not black, but are filled with details that add to the meaning of the image. The likely cause of this problem is the brightness setting of your monitor. Use your monitor settings - usually accessed by buttons on the monitor itself - to set your 'Brightness' setting to maximum or 100%.)

Basho (5) The Contemplative Landscape

Groping His Way Through Suffering to Enlightenment

Basho was a follower of Zen, a small sect of Buddhism. In terms of historical genealogy, Zen was a school within the Ch'an School or Meditation School, which came to China from India in the 6th century AD. Zen became popular in Japan in the 12th century AD. The Ch'an School was itself situated within the Mahayana School, one of the two great doctrinal divisions of Buddhism. The Mahayana School placed missionary work at the center of Buddhism, calling for Buddhists to go out into the world and convert non-Buddhists to their salvationist philosophy. As a sect, Zen renounced rational understanding of doctrine as a way to free one's self from error and pain. In Zen, the Buddhist is led to sudden insight (or realization) by contemplation, especially of nature.

Here is a long passage illustrating the Zen doctrine about nature by the Chinese philosopher, Tao Sheng (fl. 400 AD), an early advocate of ideas later identified with the Ch'an School.

"The Inner Order of Things is that of Nature. To get in mystical union with Nature is Illumination. Now, that order is free from distinctive features; Illumination, however, implies change. ... The basis of existence is unchanging, unruffled, like the surface of a pond, as long as it is not stirred by unceasing reflections of outside objects. Error has ruffled its surface and thus we have lost mastery over our fate. We grope along for a way; when we have found it we desist from erroneous moves. Returning to the original perfect state, we wonder why we ever started on the journey. For we started from the goal.... But when I studied the tendencies of life, I understook that Reality is not reflected in the images of what surrounds us here, but real is what existed before this began to exist.

"If he [Buddha] is not called he does not appear. Not that he is not ready to appear, nay--Beings , by their indolence, cut themselves off from his presence and make it impossible for him to establish contact. The Buddha is like the sun; when he is high in the sky, all kinds of articles are reflected in the pond. The reflections and forms are shaped by the articles themselves, not by the sun. And there must be a clear pond, or else the Buddha cannot appear."*

Contemplation of nature as an way to enlightenment was not unique to Zen, but was generally shared within Buddhism. Here is a hymn to nature (set in India) from Psalms of the Brethren and Sisters, an early Buddhist scripture.

"Those upland glades delightful to the soul,
Where the kareri [musk rose tree] spreads its wildering wreaths,
Where sound the trumpet-calls of elephants:
Those are the braes [hillsides, views] wherein my soul delights.
Those rocky heights with hue of dark blue clouds,
Where lies embosomed many a shining tarn
Of crystal-clear, cool waters, and whose slopes
the "herds of Indra" [rain clouds] cover and bedeck:
Those are the braes wherein my soul delights. ...

Here is enough for me who fain would dwell
in meditation rapt,mindful, and tense.
Here is enough for me, who fain would seek
The highest good, a brother filled with zeal. ..."**

We can now characterize Basho's journey to the northern provinces in terms of being a Buddhist journey. His task, as a Buddhist, was to reject the phenomenal world and free himself from bodily suffering, with the goal of reaching Enlightenment. This required him to travel. While travelling, he should try to purify himself while teaching the doctrines of Buddha. His journey should take him into nature. He was expected to lose his way. He would suffer from bad weather - rain and cold; then he would find his way to a beautiful view of nature in ideal climatic conditions for contemplating the Inner Unity of Things. This was called, "groping his way."

All of these elements of the traditional Buddhist journey were present in Basho's travel. His route was confusing and occasionally so dangerous that the path could be lost: "The moor be all a tangle of paths and a stranger could easily go astray." (P. 35.) "A path disappeared up a valley amidst a dark forest of pines and cryptomerias." (P. 37.) "We asked a number of people which plant was the katsumi, but no one seemed to know." (P. 42.) "The whereabouts of many famous places is now obscure." (P. 50.) "Not knowing where we were, we lost our way and eventually arrives at a port town ..." (P. 55.) "The path was hard to follow so he recomended that we hire a guide." (P. 59.) "The river was swollen with the rains and our journey was a perilous one." (P. 63.) "There was a curious fascination about groping our way in the dark, merely imagining the beauties that lay before us,..." (P. 69.) "Today we passed the most perilous places in all the North. The precarious path led us over boulders at the foot of a sheer cliff against which huge waves break." (P. 72.) " 'We do not know the way,' " she said. 'We are helpless and afraid.' " (P. 73.) "... I did not set out until after I had eaten my evening meal, and my steps faltered as I made my way along the road in the dusk." (P. 81.)

He suffered from the bad weather. "... though it was early summer, the air was cold." (P. 37.) "That night there was was thunder and a heavy downpour, and the roof leaked just above the place where we were lying. What with the fleas and mosquitoes, sleep was impossible. On top of that, my old complaint started up again, and I really thought I was about to breathe my last." (P. 45.) "When we reached the summit, we were thoroughly chilled and could hardly breathe." (P. 65.)

After walking long and confusing paths, he arrived at beautiful views of nature that brought tranquillity and purity through contemplation of the presence of the Inner Order of things. "Early the next morning, we visited Shiogama Shrine, ... The shrine was at the top of a long flight of stone steps, and its vermilion lacquered fence was brilliant in the morning sunlight. How wonderful it is in this land of ours, I thought, that even in remote and unfrequented places such as this, the divine power of the gods is omnipresent." (P. 52.) "It has been said too many times already, but Matsushima is indeed the most beautiful place in all Japan! ... Ah! who could possibly do justice with his brush to this wondrous divine work of the Creator of the Universe or presume to describe it adequately in words!" (P. 53.)

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Page references form Britton, A Haiku Journey (Kodansha International, 1974).

* "Tao Sheng on Nirvana and the Buddha's Way," pp. 226-227, The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha, edited by E.A. Burtt (The New American Library, 1955).

** "Songs of the Wayfarers," from "Psalms of the Brethren and Sisters," pp. 75-76, ibid.

Basho (2) Behind the Waterfall

Reading Basho's Narrow Road to a Far Province (1694).

One of Basho's metaphors concerns a waterfall. On the fourth day of his journey, Basho visited Mt. Nikko, where he praised - as we discussed in the previous article - the Tokugawa reign for spreading security and peace throughout Japan. The waterfall was famous for the view provided from behind, looking out through the curtain of falling water. Here is Basho's description.

A mile or so up the mountain was a waterfall. The water seemed to take a flying leap and drop a hundred feet from the top of the cave into a green pool surrounded by a thousand rocks. One was supposed to sidle into the cave and enjoy the falls from behind, hence its name Urami-no-Taki, "the Waterfall Viewed from Behind."

There we did begin,
Cloistered in that waterfall,
Our summer discipline.

The waterfall offers several religous and political metaphors upon which Basho draws thematically throughout his story. First, viewing the waterfall from behind epitomized Buddhist doctrine. According to the Buddha, human life is suffering; but the suffering can be escaped by abandoning sensual and material desires. The waterfall symbolizes the ever-changing stream of phenomenological experience derived from the incessant activity of our bodily senses and physical needs. To begin our journey to peace, we must go behind the stream of experience. Since the waterfall is a veil, the imagery references a fundamental quest for the Buddhist: Go behind the veil.

Basho's haiku expresses another Buddhist theme. Buddhism was a missionary religion, which involves going out into the world. It also valued monastic withdrawal from the world. The monasteries were cloisters where disciples learned a strict routine of prayer, hence, discipline. The monasteries sought and represented the high value purity of not desiring anything, separating from worldly obsessions.

The waterfall also provided a political metaphor. By unifying Japan, the Tokugawa reign enabled travellers, such as Basho, to pass through the boundaries and barriers that had previously divided Japan into its feudal territories. Those boundaries were symbols, like the waterfall, of the suffering and transitory cravings created by zealous pursuit of worldly goods, i.e., feudal quest for power that divided the nation. When the traveller went beyond the old boundary, he could turn around and look back through it. The view back would be analogous to viewing the waterfall from behind.

Crossing the boundary and looking back through it becomes Basho's template for organizing ideas, values, and historical knowledge. The template unifies behavior, spiritual values, and political allegiances in a ritualized gesture of going through a limit and turning around to look back over the path and boundary. It implicitly glorifies Tokugawa rule, which made such travel and gestures possible at all. The gesture is fundamental to Basho's journey as a political apologia.

Basho (1) Journey As Politics

Political Enlightenment

I have long loved the prose-poem, Narrow Road to A Far Province (1694)*, by the Japanese master of haiku poetry, Basho. When in college, I read collections of translated haiku, in which Basho was well represented; but it was not until I moved to Southern California that I read his great travel story.

Of course, most of Basho's dense narrative and little gems of poetry are lost to me, since I must read them in English translation, with little knowledge of Japanese history and poetry. What I could get out of the tale, nonetheless, stimulated in me a fanciful notion. Could I read Southern California, uniting pilgrimage, our history, and regional art, through Basho's tale? What would Southern California, as a historical civilization, look like if I tried to view it through the template of Basho's literary scheme? Would this exercise be simply and completely artificial? Basho's story as literature seemingly would not be translatable or transferable to Southern California, the antipode of Basho's world. After all, of all literary forms, poetry, relying on the spoken language, translates most poorly.

Let's see what template is available in Basho's tale of his journey. English sources tell us little about the poet. Basho (1644-1694) was originally a samurai warrior who fought for a feudal lord. His lord died in 1666. Basho renounced his warrior status and moved to Edo (Tokyo), the capital city, to devote himself to poetry and Buddhism. Undoubtedly this happened, but notice that it is parallel to the story of the Buddha himself. Buddha was born into the warrior caste. He eventually renounced warfare and his status to devote himself to his religio-philosophical teachings. Basho was therefore fitting himself into a religious literary convention.

We should also notice the timing of Basho's decision to abandon his samurai sword. His decision came at the end of a long feudal period (to use the European term) in Japanese history, in which the island was divided up among warring lords. The family of Ieyasu Tokugawa eventually (1600) subdued rival kingdoms. Ieyasu Tokugawa was appointed (1603) shogun by the emperor (a titular ruler), with responsibility to maintain peace in the nation. Within twenty years, the power of the remaining feudal lords was completely broken. The Tokugawa period thus initiated an era of national unity and civil peace. Relinquishing his sword symbolized Basho's subservience to the new national power.

Basho certainly understood what it meant to be in a new political order. Is it possible that Basho's poetry was not simply a contribution to Japan's literary tradition, but also a political statement? I have not read many literary histories of Basho's Narrow Road to A Far Province. The histories I have read ignore the political point of Basho's journey, his poetry, and his tale; but Basho did not try to hide his political point.

Early in his journey, he visited Mount Nikko, the site of a famous temple. He was filled with awe by the mountain beauty and its religious center. He wrote:

In olden times, the name of this mountain was written "Ni-ko," using the Chinese characters for "two" and "wild," but when Saint Kukai built a temple here, he changed the characters to "Nik-ko," meaning "sun" and "light." He must have foreseen what was to come a thousand years later, for now the august light of the Tokugawa rule illumines the whole firmament, and its beneficent rays reach into every corner of the land so that all the people may live in security and peace.[*p. 33]

Among other matters, Tokugawa rule meant that a religious pilgrim could safely journey to any shrine anywhere on the island. Free worship of Buddhism became a benefit of the new political order and its exercise in turn supported national political power. I read Basho's tale as a masked political apologia. As we shall see in Basho's discussion of "behind the falling water," in the next article, Basho veiled his political purpose behind descriptions that are metaphors.

As a political apologia, Narrow Road to a Far Province has much to say to any political society - and certainly Southern California is that - apart from its difficult-to-translate poems. Maybe it would not be so far-fetched to read our region through Basho's prose story of poetry and pilgrimage.

* A Haiku Journey: Basho's "Narrow Road to a Far Province," translated and introduced by Dorothy Britton, revised edition ([1974]Toyko and New York: Kodansha International, 1980). Non-English characters are printed in English form; apologies.