LAST WEEK, the Urban Blight Exploration Junkie relapsed at the rundown shopping center known as Hacienda Gardens in San Jose. Getting clean after such a destructive relapse is often quite difficult, especially during the holidays, but this week, the Junkie believes he is on the road to recovery.
The late Indian mystic and spiritual teacher Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, later known as Osho, provided all the inspiration the junkie needed. Among other things, Osho advocated an alchemical synthesis manifested as “Zorba the Buddha,” combining the spirituality of Buddha with the zest for life embodied by the title character from the novel Zorba the Greek.
Zorba is playfulness; Buddha is reverence. Osho believed the two were not antagonistic to each other. Science and spirituality, matter and spirit, should embrace each other rather than reject each other. They will eventually fuse into one, with art being the bridge between the two, all of which will further the evolution of humanity. The new man, the complete man, will be Zorba the Buddha.
In that sense, Osho’s teachings provided an opportunity for the Urban Blight Junkie to face his negative dualistic conditionings, overcome feelings of loneliness and transcend his polarizing inner conflicts. To improve his life, to let go of guilt and shame and get past the feelings of failure, he decided to manifest Zorba the Buddha within himself, and in ways only a native San Jose blight junkie can do.
His experience began at the uninspiring intersection of Bascom Avenue and Southwest Expressway in that no-man’s land somewhere between Campbell and San Jose, a crossroads no one would even notice if not for the light rail, which began to push through five years ago. The neighborhood features mundane apartment complexes and mobile home parks with characteristically suburban names like Sequoia Glen and Quail Hollow.
Highlighting the area is Dick’s Center, formerly the locale of a Dick’s Supermarket chain decades ago, and now an ancient shopping mall seemingly forever on its last legs, the stunning anchor of which is the long-abandoned Zorba the Greek restaurant.
Once a thriving 10,000-square-foot banquet and dining facility operated by a familial army of employees, Zorba’s shut down for good exactly 10 years ago. It now sits alone at the back of the parking lot, decrepit and faded, with its front doors chained up and circular barbed wire surrounding some of the rest of the building. It looks like a beached white buffalo, a dead reminder of a playful, festive and zestful San Jose that no longer exists. The scene appears almost symbolic, as if something about San Jose has decimated the Zorba within every single one of us.
From there, the junkie traveled over to Fifth and Jackson in order to contemplate the San Jose Buddhist Church Betsuin. For more than a century, this pristine building has anchored San Jose’s Japantown, exuding a certain contemplative spiritual beauty.
One feels inundated with a sense of serenity immediately upon entering. Quite a few social components interconnect via the facility-Boy Scouts, a choir, a Japanese language school and a Buddhist Women’s Association. The small Japanese garden outside provides a tranquil setting, ideal for spiritual contemplation, meditation and achieving a heightened sense of awareness.
Normally, such an aesthetically pleasing scenario would constitute a polar opposition to the blighted wreckage of the old Zorba the Greek restaurant on Bascom, but the blight junkie now realizes, thanks to Osho’s teachings, that both are opposite sides of the same coin. There is no distinction. Each one cannot exist without the other. Like yin and yang, they are complementary.
The experience elicited and ratified Zorba the Buddha, already percolating within the Urban Blight Junkie. He now has enough confidence to begin his journey to recovery. The art of writing this column is the bridge between Zorba and Buddha. Thanks to Osho and San Jose, the Urban Blight Exploration Junkie now has the support network he needs to carry on.
