I am Peter Zachara, a dharma practitioner and ne’er do well with no fixed abode.
With my stalwart companion Yasha we have traveled atop crowded buses, been lost and found again, ascended the Mekong by boat, trekked across the Himalayas without a guide, and attempted to follow the trail of the 7th century monk Xuan Zhang cross China and into India.
Amazingly, we have avoided serious injury.
Everything we see, touch, taste in this final age- the Age of Dregs- will vanish. The enemy is fire, war, rot, and time itself.
I can remember being onboard the FV Thor. We were in the Gulf of Alaska in the fall, and the wind and snow were blowing hard across the Alaska Peninsula. We decided to go ashore at the abandoned village of Unga, both to get out of the wind and ransack the ruined houses for anything of value. Most people were looking for guns. I was looking… just to look. In one house, amidst broken kitchen utensils and a water logged doll I found a mildewed bookcase full of expensive and rare books! An incredible find! Who would leave that behind? This at least I could save. I stuffed them into a scuffed leather suitcase and we hurried back to the boat. But as we steamed away from the island the superstitious Norwegians on the Thor told me that bringing a suitcase aboard a boat was bad luck! Everything was about luck for them. It would have to go! So with their laughter ringing in my ears I threw the whole damn thing overboard! It bobbed in our wake, was obscured by snow, and then was gone!
TheMysteriousGate.com seeks to capture this beauty, the ephemeral nature of life and art, before it crumbles away!