During times like these
The wise are influential
They can bear the imperfections
They can keep the harmony
No doubt about it
No doubt that's essential
No doubt!
That's always been a tricky one for me,
So
We should just surrender
Let fate and duty shape us
Let light hearts remake us
Let the worries hush
In the middle of this continent
In the middle of our time on earth
We perceive one another
Stay in touch
We should stay in touch
Oh, stay in touch
In touch

Joni's voice and Wayne Shorter's sax fade out under the last words, segueing into a killer meditation — the perfection of word magic and song magic giving way without attachment to the perfection of silence. Cool. Who woulda thunk it, a psychic jumpstart to the morning just showing up like this, and in Los Angeles, no less? Go figure.

This whole damned Road Trip has been like that — experiences of blinding clarity appearing when least expected, in the least likely settings. You must understand that I came back to L.A. — my home for years — reluctantly. On my last visit here, I hated it. Hate is a strong word, but no other word does justice to the experience. On that trip, I rolled into town with a mindset that had been washed squeakyclean by the winds of a full-moon vision quest in Joshua Tree the night before, only to find that my beloved City Of Angels had changed so much in the years since I moved away that I had become Camus' existential stranger in my own home town. The city had experienced death, decay and rebirth and moved on to a whole new incarnation, as had I in my time away. But on that trip I could find no ground on which the two new incarnations still had anything in common to party down about.

This visit has been different. I have been having some Serious Fun here on this particular Road Trip. Synchronistic events have been just happening, just at the right time, just for the right reason. It's been a great ride, and as I end my meditation and bow, I have a strong feeling that the ride is not over, and that somehow today is going to provide more such synchronicity. I am infused with a feeling — an acute awareness that the surf of Tao is seriously up today, and that if I am just open to the experience, I can extend the bliss of this morning's meditation for hours...or days...or maybe, with any luck, forever.

This feeling is what I live for. But it's difficult to describe. It's a kind of suspicion, sneaking up on you from time to time, that all the paddling out and all the time spent sitting on your board waiting for the perfect wave have been worthwhile, and that somehow it has all worked, and has left you in position to surf you some serious Tao. You know that you probably don't deserve it, this wild ride that you feel building up behind you and in front of you, but nonetheless here you bloody well are, perfectly set up to hop on your board and hang ten, leaning way out over the ride of your life.

Strangely enough, I associate this feeling — this unmistakable tension, this psychic early warning system that somehow 'beeps' me whenever it perceives a swelling wave of Tao — with an experience that I had here in L.A. a number of years ago, in the early days of my study with Rama. And as I get up and hop into the shower, thinking ahead to the day I can already feel building in front of me, I think back to last night, when I found myself telling that very story to Dakota.

We met at the herbarium where he lived and worked. Dakota looked good, a completely different being than the one whom I saw last about a year ago in another city, living another life, before he moved here to apprentice with a master of Chinese tonic herbalism and Taoism. He gave me the grand tour, after which we decided to go out and grab something to eat. We went to Monsoon, a new Chinese restaurant/club on the supertrendy Santa Monica promenade. As we drove there, Dakota pointed out all the new restaurants and cafes that had sprung up in Brentwood since I had been gone. I was hungry and tempted to settle for one of them, but his original choice had been good seeing. The decor at Monsoon is early Hong Kong brothel, and I felt completely at home. For some reason, in that right-at-home state of mind in a not-at-all-at-home town, I found myself remembering one of my favorite L.A. tales of power. Even though Dakota is one of my best friends, somehow the story had never come up before. But given all the synchronicity I had been experiencing on this particular Road Trip the story seemed appropriate, so I told it to him over tropical fruit drinks with silly little umbrellas in them.

The story took place in 1982. I had begun my study with Rama a year or so earlier, but that had come to a crashing halt a few weeks earlier, when he blew me out of Lakshmi as part of a 'restructuring' we later laughingly referred to as 'Purge I.' So here I was, charged way up spiritually but no longer part of any community pursuing a viable path to the spiritual, alone and on my own on a Saturday night in Westwood. I had seen one film, was feeling more than a little underwhelmed by the experience, and had searched through the newspaper listings for a midnight show to take the taste of the first film out of my eyes, without success. Nothing appealed to me.

Finally, giving up on the notion of adventure for the evening, I got in my car and started back to my place in Malibu. But about halfway there, driving along Sunset Boulevard, I was suddenly struck by an overwhelming urge, an urge that ever since I have associated with the concept of Tao-surfing. It was a feeling, but more than a feeling; it was a certainty. Theoretically I should have been able to ignore the feeling and keep driving home, but I just couldn't. The compulsion was that powerful. I felt that I just had to turn off and find my way to a bar I had been to once before on San Vicente, a dive called Mom's Saloon.

Mom's was not my kinda place. It was a college/yuppie beer bar, with sawdust on the floor and predatory patrons on the barstools, guys and gals searching for love or something like it, something they would be willing to settle for at this hour on a Saturday night. But on this particular Saturday night, at this particular hour, I was overcome by a feeling that there was simply nowhere better to be on planet Earth. Well, what the fuck, I thought — anything for a weird life. I hit the turn signal and headed for San Vicente.

When I got to Mom's, the place was packed. I couldn't find a parking place anywhere on the street, and had to circle the block twice before giving up and pulling into the supermarket lot at the end of the block. This is important primarily for the timing of it all; if I had found a place to park more easily, the events that followed would never have happened.

I locked my car, got out, and started walking up the sidewalk towards my weirdly-compelling destination. As I walked, my attention was somehow drawn to a woman who had just come out of the door of Mom's and was walking, somewhat unsteadily, in my direction. The timing was perfect. I passed her just as she reached the entrance to the supermarket and reached out to open the door. It didn't open. The market had just closed.

She shook the handle and then said, somewhat loudly, "Shit!"

Now I don't know how many of you have ever lived in L.A., but the prevailing wisdom of the place is that you just don't talk to random folks on the street, unless you're looking for Big Trouble On Little Santa Monica. But it was late, this woman seemed harmless enough, and she seemed to be in some distress over the fact that she couldn't get into the market, so I broke all my usual patterns and spoke to her.

"What's up? Can I help?"

She looked up as if seeing me for the first time. In fact, I think it was the first time she had seen me. She scanned me from head to toe and then said, "I just needed to get in there is all. I needed to use the pay phone to call someone to see if they could come and pick me up."

For some reason, as she said this, my intuition kicked into hyperdrive and I could see the whole scenario, laid out clearly before me. I was already too far gone into anything-for-a-weird-life mode to stop now, so I put what I was seeing into words. "Let me guess," I said. "You came here with some guy but he's being a complete asshole, and you are looking for some way to get home without him."

She stopped shaking the door handle and looked at me more closely.

She said, "Exactly. I met him earlier tonight, and it started out Ok, but now he is drunk as a skunk and coked out of his mind and he has the keys to my car in his pocket and won't give them back to me. So I'm trying to find a way to get back to my car. I'm pretty sure there is a second set of keys in the car, so if I can break into it, I can get home."

I ask, "Where's home?"

"Pomona."

Ick. The full catastrophe. She is stuck here in West L.A., miles away from where she lives. I ask, "And where is your car?"

"It's over by Robertson, at the Beverly Center. I left it there when I decided to go out with this guy and his friends."

My mind is going, "Robertson is at least a half an hour away, in the opposite direction from Malibu. You don't really want to get involved with this. It's late. You should go home and get some sleep." But what comes out of my mouth, even though I don't remember consciously making the decision to say it, is, "Well, I'm not doing anything particularly interesting right now. I'll drive you back to your car if you want." Anything for a weird life.

She looks at me long and hard, obviously trying to focus through a fading haze of alcohol and broken Saturday-night dreams. The silence is deafening. Finally, she says, "Ok...if you don't mind."

"I don't mind," I say. "It would be my pleasure." I lead her back to my car and open the passenger-side door for her, as non-threateningly as I can. I cannot help but notice that she is alarmingly attractive, and I am trying to do everything I possibly can to convince her that she has not just made a terrible mistake by trusting some guy she has just met on the street in the middle of the night. I help her into the car and close the door gently behind her. I walk around to the driver side, climb in, and head off towards Robertson Boulevard.

On the way, she fills me in a little on who she is. Not surprisingly, I learn that she is an aspiring actor, here to make her mark on the L.A. film scene. As I drive, we have a cool conversation about our favorite films and actors, and both of us start to relax a bit. The drive passes quickly. Finally, we find ourselves in the vicinity of Robertson, and she directs me to the Beverly Center parking lot where she had left her car. Sure 'nuff, there it is, a blue Honda Accord, sitting alone and unattended under the glaring lights.

We park next to her car and get out, and I proceed to try to find some way to break into it. This goes on for some time, without success. I come away from the experience with an enduring sense of respect for Honda automobiles. I try everything I can think of, from the old coat hanger trick to the slip-the-flat-piece-of-metal-into-the-window-trying-to-jimmy-the-lock trick. Nothing works. The Honda just sits there, locked, completely impregnable, smirking at us.

It's now about one-thirty in the morning, and cops on patrol in the area are starting to notice us. I am about to give up on the whole thing and wave one of them down, but first I decide to try that meaningless gesture that guys resort to in moments of helplessness like this. I reach into my pocket and pull out my own car keys. I drive a Subaru 4WD wagon; she drives a Honda. I know this cannot possibly work, but gestures are gestures, so I put my key into the driver's side door and turn it. The key turns in the lock as smoothly as a knife in warm butter. The door opens.

She freaks out and starts to alternate between laughing and crying and amazement. She simply cannot believe it. I'm a former student of Rama’s, so I do the macho cool-frood-in-the-flow-of-the-Tao thing and suggest that this sorta thing happens to me all the time, although it doesn't. After a while, she calms down and starts to look around in the car for the mythical second set of keys.

No keys. Nada. She starts looking depressed again. So I think to myself, "Heck...it worked once, right?" and sit down in the driver's seat of her car, slipping my Subaru key into the ignition of the Honda. I turn it clockwise and the car starts up, first time. She starts to freak out again, but by this time I am kinda gettin' into the whole scene, and manage to convince her that it's really just a normally kinky L.A.-kinda thing going down here. She doesn't buy it, but doesn't know what else to say.

But the issue still remains, how is she going to get home to Pomona? Well, I'm a former Rama student, right? He drilled into us the wisdom of being prepared for any eventuality, so I carry a second key, stashed in a magnetic box in a hidden area of my car's undercarriage. I retrieve the spare key, try it in her ignition to make sure it works, and then flash my best Buddha-like smile as I hand it to her.

Mindblown, she hugs me fiercely and then climbs into the Honda. Before she leaves, she recalls our conversation about movies and acting while driving over here, and promises to someday thank me for this onstage when she wins her first Academy Award. I fully expect this to happen. No doubt.

I mean, think about it. The power here is clearly hers. In trouble late at night in Los Angeles, a stunningly beautiful but slightly inebriated woman sends out a psychic distress call and manages to attract not just one of the few men in town who aren't likely to rape or rob her, but one who happens to be carrying around a spare key to her car. The mind boggles.

We exchange numbers and promise to stay in touch and I watch her drive off into the night. I climb into my car and start the long drive back to Malibu, pondering the mysteries of life and savoring the clear, unmistakable feeling of Tao-surfing.

This morning, fifteen years later, after a long shower and another meditation, I experience that same feeling. It is hazy, indefinable, but the feeling that something cool could happen is unmistakable, and I know from past experience that if I just remain open to the feeling, something cool will happen. Driving to pick up Dakota, I take San Vicente and pass the place that used to be Mom's Saloon, and the feeling intensifies.

At the herbarium, he hops in the car and we drive off, stalking the perfect place to eat lunch. Oh...pardon me...we're in L.A. — do lunch. I have a place in mind, but synchronistically Dakota suggests it, so I don't have to. He pointed it out last night, as one of the spots he has heard is a favorite restaurant of one of our mutually-favorite artists. This is the kind of random, seemingly meaningless information that one gets used to if one has known Dakota for a while.

I've known him for a while. And in that time, I have almost become used to being amazed at his exploits. Dakota is a trip, similar in some ways to the character Philbert in the film Powwow Highway. He is one of those amazing light hearts at loose in the universe, free spirits who almost never follow the rules. Add to this the indisputable fact that much of what he does makes no sense on a practical level, and you have the propensity for disaster. Instead, what you get with Dakota is a propensity for adventure and absolutely incredible meetings with remarkable men and women. Somehow, the guy just taps into the flow of Tao, decides to do something that makes no sense whatsoever, and as a result manages to meet just the right person at just the right time and turns the meeting into just the right adventure for both parties.

I have seen him do this so many times that when he told me, almost a year ago in another city, one of the things he knew was going to happen when he moved to L.A., I didn't treat it the way you might. He read to me from an interview with one of our favorite artists, Joni Mitchell, stressing the part where she talked about the problems she has been having with her health.

Dakota stopped reading and sat for a moment in silence, and then said, "I know I am going to meet her when I get to L.A. And when I do, I will be able to give her a copy of Ron's book on Chinese tonic herbalism. And she will read it and contact him, and the herbs will help her get her health back."

If anyone else had said this, I would have smirked and said, "Yeah, right. And monkeys will fly out of my butt!" But this was Dakota, so I just smiled and said, "Right." Because it had that feel of Tao — of rightness — about it. I could feel it, he could feel it. It was going to happen. The only question was when. But if you're as committed to Tao-surfing as we are, you don't ask questions like "When?" You just paddle out and wait.

Well, he has been waiting for almost a year, carrying a copy of the book around with him, just in case. But we're in my car today, me driving and Dakota giving me directions to the restaurant. It's been a long time since I have driven in this neighborhood, and I am fairly lost, so I take the turn just before the one I am supposed to take and then have to wait for a few moments for traffic to pass before I can back out and pull into the correct driveway. This is important primarily for the timing of it all; if I had pulled into the correct driveway the first time, the events that followed would possibly never have happened.

I pull into the lot and Dakota hops out. I have to wait beside the car for the valet, and as I am standing there I turn to my right and see that another car has just pulled up behind mine and the woman driver has gotten out and is hugging the parking attendant as if they're old friends. The timing is perfect. It's Joni Mitchell. Across the lot, I notice Dakota staring at her, too, but not with the look of recognition I would have expected. I hand my keys to the attendant and walk over to Dakota and say, "Well, it looks like today is the day, eh?"

He looks at her more closely and says, "Is it really Joni? I was just staring because it was so unusual for someone to hug a parking attendant like that." It was Joni. She went up the escalator and was shown to an outside table at the restaurant we were heading to, where a gentleman friend was waiting for her. We also were shown to an outside table, and Dakota ran off to call one of his fellow apprentices at the herbarium and beg her to bring over a copy of the book. She obviously has been around Dakota for some time as well, because she arrived with it in only a few minutes. Dakota runs downstairs to get the book from her, and starts back up the escalator. Just as he reaches the top, clutching the book, Joni's lunch companion leaves and she is left sitting there all alone. The timing is perfect. Dakota walks over to her and says hello.

I am trying my best not to eavesdrop. My back is turned to them and I don't wish to turn around. It is my friend's cool moment, not mine. But I cannot help but overhear when Joni greets him not as an annoying fan, but with genuine warmth. Dakota affects people that way. He starts by saying that he's been expecting to run into her like this for almost a year, and for all that time has been carrying around a book to give to her. He carefully explains that he's really not a stalker, but I suspect that possibility had never even occurred to her. Dakota doesn't affect people that way.

She responds to his quick explanation about the Chinese tonic herbs with genuine interest. Joni is definitely not a fan of Western medicine; doctors have messed her up more than the diseases they were trying to cure. The two of them have a very friendly, very real conversation about health and the value of traditional but non-mainstream healing methods for the next five or ten minutes. At the end of it, as Dakota stands up to take his leave, I finally turn and look at them. Joni reaches out and takes his hand and squeezes it, as if they were old friends. It is an extremely cool moment. Both faces glow with so much light I actually consider turning and looking behind me to see if I cast a shadow.

Dakota comes back to our table and we eat our lunch. His face is blazing with light and the exhilaration of catching a wave of Tao. We don't even talk about it much. What is there to say? Some days the surf of Tao is up, and if you have done the prep work and positioned yourself perfectly, you can catch a wave that defies convention and logic. This moment happened because he really cared about this lady, because he wanted to thank her somehow for all the words, music and paintings that had enriched his life, and because his intent was pure. He didn't want to meet her just for the hell of it; he wanted to pass along some information that he sincerely believed could help her, and thus convey his gratitude more deeply than he could with a simple "Thanks."

I have no doubt that one day Joni will give the herbarium a call and will take advantage of their knowledge of the tonic herbs to regain a sense of health and well being.

No doubt. That's funny. It suddenly strikes me that she used that very phrase in the song that woke me, in a verse that can be interpreted as a paraphrase of the user's manual for Taoism, the Tao Te Ching:

No doubt about it
No doubt that's essential
No doubt!
That's always been a tricky one for me

Tricky or not, it worked, didn't it? Dakota felt the flow of Tao almost a year ago, and refused to doubt it. I felt his certainty, and also refused to doubt it. Perhaps that's the simple secret of surfing the Tao — no doubt. Perhaps that's the simple key that allows us to stay in touch with the flow of life. Perhaps that's the Way life should always be. Perhaps that's the Way life will always be, if we maximize our meditation and minimize our doubts.

Perhaps I should just stop all this intellectualizing and allow the lady herself — a far better writer than I — to express the joy of surfing the Tao on San Vicente the way she did in her song:

So
We should just surrender
Let fate and duty shape us
Let light hearts remake us
Let the worries hush
In the middle of this continent
In the middle of our time on earth
We perceive one another
Stay in touch
We should stay in touch
Oh, stay in touch
In touch